Three Orphans the story of Lock, Shock, & Barrel
by Tom Bone
Summary: You've seen Lock, Shock, and Barrel beforbut never like this! Lock Deville is shunned at the orphanage he lives at...but everything changes when he meets the new kids, Emily Sorciere and her halfbrother, Peter Squelette.
1. I'm Suicidal

Chapter I  
"I'm Suicidal"

My name is Lock Deville. Though, everyone now calls me Lock the Devil. I often reminisce about my earlier childhood (Heck, I'm only 9 now) and the day that changed my life forever. Back when I was seven, I lived in a boarding school for orphans called "the Happy Camper Orphanage". Trust me, that place was anything but happy. They fed us stuff that looked like shit and the water was brown. This is where my story begins.

My parents were brutally murdered when was five and I had nowhere else to go. Their screams haunt me all the time. When I wake up, I always think I'm going to hear my mom's voice calling to me "Lock, honey, time for breakfast!" But all I heard when I wake up is fists banging on my slum of a dorm's door and Groundskeeper Kronenbitter screaming from the other side: "Get up, you lazy midget! It's time for class!"

It's true, I was small. But that jerk-off, "Mister I-was-in-the-military-for-ten-years" didn't have to rub it in…I was always being teased and taunted for being the smallest kid in the first grade. Oh, how I hated them all…they all laughed at me and stole my lunch. Even the kindergarteners made fun of me. Everyday, I endured everything I could take. They pushed and mocked me at every turn. One day, the sixth graders blindfolded and gagged me and tossed me into the lake outside of the school. Luckily, I was able to cut the rope on a sharp rock and I escaped. It was then I made the decision that I've had enough! I was going to kill myself.

I walked through the school as casually as possible at around 8:00 PM, making sure no one thought I was up to something. Then a fourth grader strolled by and pushed me into a wall.  
"Beat it, squirt." The kid said.  
I growled at him loudly. "Fuck off!" I yelled back at him. I smiled devilishly as I kept walking. "That's the last time he's going to do that to me!"  
I tiptoed into the cafeteria's kitchen and searched around in the drawers that were low enough for me to reach. For the higher drawers, I got a chair to stand on. In the ninth drawer I fished in, I pulled out the hugest steak knife I had ever seen. It was shiny and it larger than my own head. But most of all, the blade was unbelievably sharp.  
"Wonderful." I cackled to myself. 

My last step was to get a piece of paper. I wrote on it in my room. Basically, it explained why I was going to take my own life. I don't think I spelled many of the words correctly, but I did what I could. With a piece of tape, I stuck the note where my stomach was and I trotted down to the lake with the knife in my hand and the full moon was unusually huge that night. I laughed as I pointed the knife towards my heart.  
"They won't miss me!" I sounded insane. "Hahahahahahahahaha… 'Oh, where's Lock?' they'll say. 'I'm not sure, but, then again, who gives a shit? No one wants him around!' Hahahahahahahahaha…"  
I was about to pierce my own heart and die in the moonlight, but I heard voices.


	2. Shock and Barrel

Chapter II  
"Shock and Barrel"

One of them was a high-pitched girl's voice and the other one was also high-pitched, but it was a boy.  
"Are you sure we're going the right way?" the boy said.  
"Cool it!" the girl shrieked at him. "Do you want us to get caught?"  
"No..."

I thought that they would turn me in to Kronenbitter, so I dashed to the weeping willow tree about twenty feet away from me and scurried up it with the dagger and hid in the branches. At the second I got settled, the two people walked down the hill with plastic shovels and the boy was carrying a bucket of candy. They were kids. They looked about my age, too. The girl had black hair and was wearing a long yellow shirt with denim jeans. The boy was a bit shorter than her, had blonde hair, wore a red shirt with a skull on it and also had denim jeans. I watched as quietly as I could.

The boy was digging a small hole with one of the shovels and the girl watched him, holding her own shovel.   
"Put your back into it, Barrel!" she yelled at him.  
"I am!" the boy called Barrel grunted.  
The girl sighed. "Boys are so dumb."  
"I heard that!" Barrel said as he dove at the girl and got into a fistfight on the ground.  
I couldn't help but laugh a little; it was a pretty funny sight. After a few minutes, they stopped fighting and Barrel got back to work. Soon enough, he had made the hole bigger and he dropped the bucket of candy into it and began filling it back up. I tried to lean forward to get a closer look, but the branch broke from under me and my screams broke the stillness of the night. And my world went black.

Later on, I tried to open my eyes but I couldn't. Something was weighing me down. I began to sit up and I heard the girl shriek "Oh, my God! ZOMBIE!" And I felt the plastic shovel smack my face hard and I fell back down. I opened my eyes to see the unnamed girl and Barrel lean over me.

"Ah, it's not a zombie, the kid's alive." The girl said in disappointment to show her comrade she wasn't scared, but I felt a hint of relief in her voice.  
"Hit him again!" Barrel said with a grin. Then he stopped. "What's he doing here?" Then the grin appeared once more. "LET'S INTERROGATE HIM!"  
The girl stared down at me. "He's kinda cute. If anyone's doing the interrogation it's gonna be me."  
I blushed and tried to change the subject. "Who are you guys?"   
"I'm Emily Sorcičre." She said. "But everyone calls me Shock. You can kiss my hand, if you want."  
"Err…"  
"And that's my half-brother," Shock said pointing to Barrel. "Peter Squelette. But everyone calls him—"  
"Barrel." I finished for her. "I already know."

"Who are you?" Barrel asked me.  
"Lock."  
"No, your real name."  
I nodded. "It's Lock."  
"Uh-huh." Barrel nodded. "What are you doing out here?"  
"Well, I was going to kill myself but I thought you guys would report me to the groundskeeper that lives at the school up on the hill."  
"Kronenbitter?" Shock asked me.   
"Yea—hey, how'd you know?"  
"We're new here; our parents didn't have enough money to support us, so they sent this to Happy Camper Orphanage." Shock replied.  
"Why did ya wanna take your own life?" Barrel asked me.  
I sighed deeply. "No one liked me…I don't have any friends…"  
Shock put her hand around my shoulders. "We'll be yer friends!"  
"Thanks…" I said pessimistically. I didn't want friends; all I wanted to was to be respected.

"Yeah!" Barrel exclaimed. "Me an' Shock are gonna teach ya how ta have f-u-h-n!"  
"You mean, 'f-u-n', doofus." Shock said to her half-brother.  
"Yeah, that's it."  
"Fun?" I asked.  
"Uh-huh." Barrel replied. "Back where Shock an' me use to live, we used to play pranks all the time!" he turned to Shock. "Hey, Shock, 'member when we poured oatmeal on that guy's head from dat maple tree?"   
Shock chuckled. "A-and remember when we hid that lady's cat in a box!  
"Yeah, and when she opened it, da cat, like, 'sploded out of the box and attacked her out of sheer terror!"  
I laughed as we walked back up the hill and too the school. That sounded pretty funny. And then I smiled. I had friends.


	3. Our First Day

Chapter III  
"Our First Day"

Shock and Barrel visited my room on Saturday. Barrel was rooming with me and Shock came to help set up. She kept complaining about what a dump it was.  
"It's the only place I've got." I explained to her.  
"You could personalize it a little."  
"Uh-huh…"

Barrel seemed rather excited on our first night. "Oh, yeah! I can't wait Lock! This is going to be so cool! We'll be like brothers a-and we can eat lots o' candy and sugar and stay up all night like a bunch of vampires and we'll sleep through school!"  
I looked at the hyper, pale faced boy across the room from me and he was still talking. His face looked kinda creepy basked in the moonlight. "Um Barrel?"  
Barrel stopped almost instantaneously. "What?"  
I laughed a little. "Go to sleep."

Shock and I met up with Barrel the next day in our lunch hour.  
"Why aren't you in any of our classes?" I asked him.  
He was hesitant.  
Shock blurted out. "Barrel's in the retard classes!"  
"Am not!"   
Barrel punched his sister and she slapped him and before I knew it, all ages of the school started chanting "fight, fight, fight!" I understood; Barrel was in one of the Special Ed classes. I felt sorry for anyone who was in those. Soon, Kronenbitter came to break the fight up.  
"Sorcičcre, Squelette!" he boomed. "What in the name of mamma's duck soup is going on?"  
Some of the kids giggled.  
"Ah, shut the hell up, ya little bastards!" he screamed at us. Kronenbitter picked up Shock and Barrel by the shirts and walked out of the lunchroom. "You're going right to see the headmaster."

I gulped. The headmaster on their first day? I had to get them out of trouble. I just had to. I quietly tiptoed behind Kronenbitter, staying out of sight whenever he thought he heard something. I passed by the window with the tree that I climbed up in. I don't know what came over me, but I heard a voice, a deep southern accent saying "C'mon, Lock, do it. You know you want to get revenge on Kronenbitter." I turned behind me and no one was there; only my shadow. Almost like I was possessed, I ran outside and got the knife out of the tree. I ran back in and up to the headmaster's office.  
I heard Kronenbitter inside. "You little cretins are in huge trouble."  
"What are you going to do to us?" Barrel said with a worried tone.  
"That's for the headmaster to decide."  
I gulped and my body began move by itself once again. My hand reached out opened the door, the knife was in the other hand and once I opened it, I chucked the knife past Shock and Barrel's heads and I closed my eyes when I heard a ripping sound and I closed my eyes. Shock and Barrel ran past me and Barrel grabbed my left arm and Shock grabbed my right and dragged me backwards.  
"What just happened?" I asked in utter confusion.   
"Ya slimly missed Kronenbitter with a dagger, that's what happened." Shock replied to me as we turned the corner. Barrel giggled. "That was so cool how you got us out of there! I think the knife sliced his shirt open."  
Even though I shouldn't have, I felt kind of proud of myself. Maybe people would respect me now that I stood up to Kronenbitter. I heard him scream loudly, but pushed it to the back of my mind.

We were back in my room soon enough. Shock kissed me on the cheek for saving her from "the ultimate evil of the educational department." Barrel couldn't stop talking about what just happened and I tried to seem as modest as possible. 

Shock, Barrel, and I went to dinner later. "What's on the menu?" Shock asked me.  
"Well, let's see, it's our first day back from summer vacation and there should be—"  
"You guys stay here all summer!" Shock interrupted.  
"Well, yeah." I explained to her. "In the summer, it's like an orphanage and during the rest of the year; it's like a boarding school."  
Shock understood. "So what is there to eat?"  
"There's PB&J, soup, sandwiches, p—"  
The headmaster began to talk over the intercom. "Lock Deville, Emily Sorcičcre, and Peter Squelette to the main office.  
Barrel sighed. "Oh, shit…looks like Kronenbitter squealed…"  
"Lock threw a knife at him;" Shock snapped at him. "He's obviously gonna squeal…"

I knew this was coming to me all day. I might as well face it now. We walked there in utter silence.  
"Ya think they'll send us to juvie?" Barrel said quietly.  
No one answered him.  
We made it to the office and the headmaster was sitting at his desk, Kronenbitter behind him. The headmaster gray hair and always wore a sweater vest. He was normally kind but he had no tolerance for trouble makers. I looked up at Kronenbitter and he looked very strange. He obviously wasn't wearing the same shirt but it was something about his eyes; his pupils were extremely oversized…I felt uncomfortable.

"Now," the headmaster said in a surprisingly calming tone. "There's been a rumor going around that you, Lock, hurled a knife at Groundskeeper Kronenbitter in order for Emily and Peter to escape. Is this true?"  
I was confused. Rumor? We never told anyone about what happened today.  
"Let me interject." Kronenbitter said in a voice that wasn't his own—it was that deep southern accented voice in my head—though no one seemed to notice Kronenbitter's voice change. "All I said was it was just a rumor, headmaster. Look at me. I'm fine. I don't look like no knife got tossed at me."  
"You're right, Groundskeeper," the headmaster said softly. "But it occurs to me that these kids may have spread the rumor just to get attention. You and I both agree that you're not the most loved groundskeeper in the world."  
Kronenbitter's wide eyes continued to stare. "That be true…"  
"We swear we didn't spread any rumors!" Barrel interjected. "We're just innocent kids."  
The Headmaster sighed deeply. "You kids are free to go."

All three of us skipped dinner and went back to my room.  
"What just happened?" I asked the others in awe. "We didn't go to juvie. Heck, we didn't even get detention."  
"How'd ya get the bravery to fling a dagger at the dude?" Barrel asked me.  
I sighed. I must've sounded insane when I said this. "A voice in my head told me to do it…and, like I was under some sort of spell, I went and got a knife"  
They were silent, as I expected them to be. Or…at least for a few seconds.  
"Haven't you ever heard of the Oogie Boogieman?" Shock asked me.  
"The what!"   
"Barrel." She looked at him.  
The boy nodded and went over to where I kept my flashlight, turned it on and shined it on his face as Shock turned off the lights.  
"The Oogie Boogieman," he said dramatically. "Is the scariest monsters of all! He is the one hiding under your bed; teeth ground sharp and eyes glowing red. Or he is the one hiding under your stairs; fingers like snakes and spiders in his hair. He is the "who" when you call "who's there?" and he is the wind blowing through your hair. He is the shadow on the moon at night; filling your dreams to the brim with fright!"  
I listened.  
"The Oogie Boogieman is said to possess little children and cause trouble in their own little world—" Barrel then pointed at me ominously. "And you're his patsy this time, Lock."  
"Is any of this even true?" I asked him with my eyebrow raised.  
"Uh-huh." he nodded. "One time this kid I knew was possessed by him and he went to juvie for killing his neighbor."  
I started to believe as soon as I remembered Kronenbitter. "Kronenbitter looked hypnotized today when we saw him."  
"Yeah, and?" Shock asked me, wanting me to get to the point.  
"He used the same voice I had in my head."


	4. Happy Halloween

Chapter IV  
"Happy Halloween"

Shock decided it was just a coincidence that all of that stuff happened (I had a feeling that she was getting a bit creeped out by it) and the legendary Oogie Boogieman (though I've never heard of him) became less and less of a subject for Barrel's one-sided conversations. Soon enough, October rolled around and our names were known around the whole school. No one mentioned one of our names without mentioning the other two. "Lock, Shock, and Barrel" is what they called us. The names "Emily" and "Peter" were obsolete. We became little pranksters throughout those two months; playing a joke on whomever we pleased. Big, or small.

The last week before Halloween came and the Headmaster let us go off school grounds and buy our costumes. He was planning a "trick-or-treat around the dorms" kinda thing. Shock, Barrel, and I went to the costume store and bought our outfits. I dressed up as a devil, Shock as a witch, and Barrel as a skeleton. We all wore our costumes out of the store.  
"You look like a dork." Shock said to Barrel as we walked back up the hill to the school.  
"Do not!" Barrel screeched at her.  
"Do too!"  
I always laughed when they bickered back and forth.   
Shock stopped at that moment, leaving only her brother to speak. "My brilliant brain just hatched an idea!" She said with a hint of excitement.  
"What is it!" Barrel asked loudly.  
Shock smirked at him. "Can't tell ya."  
"Aw…don't be like that, Shock!" Barrel moaned  
"I'll tell you on Halloween. But I need your help."  
"What do we have to do?" I said to her, also wondering what she had in store.  
"Just find as many bugs as you can…and meet me in the garden shed at 11:00 PM on Halloween."

After school all that week, Barrel and I went digging for insects we kept them in a box we found. On the night of Halloween, while the other students were finishing up their trick-or-treating, Barrel and I did as Shock instructed and went to the shed at eleven. We knocked on the door quietly so Kronenbitter wouldn't catch us sneaking around.  
"Is that you guys?" we heard her say from the inside.  
"Lock and Barrel reported for duty!" Barrel said.  
"Do you have the bugs?"  
"Yup." I replied to her as I felt the box moving in my hands.

Shock then let us it. She asked me to see the bugs so I opened up the box and she let out a screech of delight as to how many there were crawling around in there. Shock skipped happily to the corner of the shed where the tools were and she lifted up a huge burlap sack.   
"What are we gonna do?" Barrel asked her.  
"Simple," she said with a conniving smile. "It's the most diabolical, destructive and mind-bendingly cool plan that this school has ever seen!"  
Barrel became more hyperactive than ever. "Tell us!" he began to screech at her. "I'm gonna explode if we don't know!"  
Shock glared at her brother and sighed. "We're gonna fill this sack with bugs and dump it on Kronenbitter."   
Barrel was filled with uncontrollable glee, but I was not impressed. "You made us make a week just so we could hear that!"   
"Shut up."  
"Make me!"  
She sighed again. "Well, I thought it was cool…besides, it was all I could think of."   
"It'll have to do…" I muttered disappointedly.  
Barrel was almost literally bouncing off the walls. "Wow I can't wait to see the look on Kronenbitter's face when we do this."  
Shock and I grinned.  
"It's probably going to be like this—" Barrel made a weird face.  
We all laughed. But then Shock shushed us.  
"What?" I asked her.  
"There's someone outside…" she said seriously. This wasn't one of her pranks where she would go out and pretend someone was there and Barrel and I would run out and she would laugh at us. This was real.

Once Barrel and I quieted, we heard some rustling outside, too.  
"Stay quiet." Shock whispered to us.  
After about thirty seconds of rustling, a small piece of paper slipped under the door. After Shock was sure the intruder was gone, she tiptoed over to the piece of paper and picked it up. It looked like the writer of the note could barely hold a pen. Shock read it aloud.

Children,

Are you ready for the best Halloween you'll ever see in your life? The come meet me down by the lake at midnight and I'll make sure this is a night that you'll never forget.

Sincerely,  
The Oogie Boogieman 

"What a piece of crap!" Shock said as she crumpled up the note and threw it over her shoulder.  
"Yeah…" I agreed with her as I leaned against the wall. "It's probably a Halloween prank from one of the older kids trying to get back at us for a prank we pulled on them."  
Barrel disagreed. "See? What did I tell ya? The Oogie Boogieman has centered himself around Lock!"  
"SHUT UP WITH THIS OOGIE BOOGIEMAN CRAP!" I shrieked at him.  
Barrel was silent and I kind of felt sorry for yelling at him.  
"Forget Kronenbitter!" our self appointed leader commanded. "We're gonna give these older kids a run for their money."  
"What are we going to do?" Barrel asked her, completely ignoring me.  
"Same plan, different victim…or victims; whichever." she said. "Lock, get the sack. Barrel, get the bugs."  
"Yes ma'am!" Barrel shouted like he was in the army and grabbed the big box.  
As Barrel and I exited, Shock grabbed a toilet plunger, a pitchfork, and a broom from off the wall, muttering something about might needing them.


	5. The Gamblin' Boogieman

Chapter V  
"The Gamblin' Boogieman"

Shock, Barrel, and I hid ourselves behind the branches of the tree I hid the knife in. Like the night I tried to kill myself, the moon was unspeakably large.   
"They must've chickened out…" Shock moaned disappointedly, at 1 minute to twelve.  
I could barely hold the sack up on the branch anymore and Barrel still wouldn't talk to me. "This is so stupid." I insisted to her. "I told you it was just a stupid prank get us to come here. Man, I hate people…Just our luck! I have to drag this stupid sack all the way down the hill and up this fucking tree and for what? Nothing that's what!"  
Then I heard the voice again. But this time, everyone heard it. "What's that you were sayin' about luck, devil boy?"

We all looked out to the lake where we heard the voice and saw nothing. But then, we looked up at the sky at the huge moon and saw a head of someone' sinister shadow on it. It looked like the head of the ghost.  
"Who are you!" Shock bawled at it in fright.   
"Ahahahahaha!" the shadow laughed heartily. "I am the Shadow on the Moon at night; filling your dreams to the brim with fright."  
A mighty wind began to blow furiously as the person's whole shadow was now seen across the moon. I tried to look around for whoever may be casting the shadow, but no one was there.

The Shadow began to actually step off the moon and put itself onto the grass under the tree. It began to whoosh up the tree and it zipped into the bag I was holding. Shock, Barrel, and I screamed loudly and jumped out of the tree; the bag dropped down as well. We backed up from the bag as it was beginning to take the shape of the shadow. Soon enough, the sack manifested itself in the shape of the shadow on the moon.  
"My name…" he said. "Is the Oogie Boogieman!" He smiled widely and we could see all the insects squirming around between his burlap lips.  
"I told you!" Barrel yelled at Shock and me. "I knew he was real and you didn't believe me!"   
Shock gathered up her courage. "Mister Oogie Boogieman I—"   
"Please," he smirked. "Call me 'Oogie'…"  
"I'll call you whatever I want!" she sneered at him.  
Oogie put his hands on his hips.

She continued. "Mister Oogie Boogieman, what do you want from us?"  
Oogie turned his newly formed head over to Barrel. "Perhaps your friend could tell you. He seems to know everything about me."  
So it was true; Oogie did possess me and Kronenbitter. Oogie saw through my eyes. I held my head and closed my eyes thinking that none of this was possible. But it was.   
We all looked at Barrel and he took a breath and spoke in complete and utter calmness. "Each year at midnight on Halloween, the Oogie Boogieman takes one or more children from Earth and brings them back to his torture chamber to kill and/or eat them."  
"And where the hell is this torture chamber that's so scary!" Shock yelled, looking from Barrel to Oogie.  
The landscape was quiet and I was surprised that Kronenbitter hadn't heard Oogie's abominable laughter or perhaps no time had passed since we met the creature at all?  
Oogie smiled so widely, we could all hear the burlap fabric of the sack stretching. "Halloweentown."  
The wind began to blow furiously again, so furiously, in fact, that creepy tree was ripped straight off the ground. I closed my eyes in sheer terror and I felt the other two began to cling to me for dear life. I didn't know what was happening, but while Oogie laughed his burlap head off, I felt my feet lift off the ground and I drifted aimlessly in the midnight sky.


	6. Confusion

Chapter VI  
"Confusion"

My world began spiraling out of control. I saw my past life and what it was like before my parents were killed. When I was younger, I would sit in front off the TV watching Peewee's Playhouse…or something like that. Meanwhile, my mom would make me a peanut-butter jelly lunch—but it had to be cut into triangles. Even though I couldn't hold the mitt up, Dad and I used to play baseball after lunch. He would always praise me if I caught it; he'd pick me up, put me on his shoulders and run around with me up there as I yelled gleefully "I caught it! I caught it!". I was blissfully unaware of the fact that the good times would abruptly end because of some fucking psychopaths.

I was downstairs when it happened. I was rolling a ball around with my dad on the floor when it fell down the basement stairs and I told him I'd get it. If I thought I was sad when my dog, Zero, died, I was completely destroyed due to what happened next. When I was just about to head back upstairs, I heard the front door swing open. There were two people.  
"DON'T MOVE!" I heard one of the voices say.   
"There's no way in hell I'm gonna listen to you!" my dad yelled.  
I think he took my mom by the arm and he opened the basement door and came down, slammed it behind him and locked it. I could hear the people trying to break through the door.

"Mom, Dad?" I asked nervously. "What's going on?"  
"Lock," Mom tried to say as calmly as possible, but I could tell she was frightened beyond all reason. "There are some bad men in the house."  
I was bewildered. "What!"  
"Son," Dad told me. "I want you to know that we love you very much and if we don't make it out alive, I want you to remember that, if anything."   
"Alive…" I repeated softly.  
My dad charged back upstairs and I heard a gunshot.

I saw blood.

"JULES!" Mom shrieked. She ran up stairs to see if he was alright, but I heard another gunshot and one of the men said "oh, no you don't…"   
My eyes widened in terror and I was able to get to the basement window by standing on a few things and I climbed out of it. With tears streaming down my face, I ran to the police. My dad showed me the station down the street and he said that if anything bad happens, go there. I burst through the doors and started shouting to the officer (who's name I knew was Lenny because my dad used to work with him) at the desk.  
"Sir," I panted. "You gotta help me…"  
"What seems to be the problem, Lock?" he said through his bushy, black mustache.  
"There are men with guns in my house." Lock said.  
Officer Lenny was taken aback. "My word…Where are your parents?"  
"They're still at the house."  
Lenny took the transceiver next to him and spoke into it. "It's Lenny…We've got a situation."  
Lenny took his car with me and we drove back to my house, followed by other officers. Lenny told me to stay in the car, but I followed. Lenny bashed the door open and three officers followed him and closed the door, probably for me not to hear the unfortunate news. I placed my ear to the door.  
"They're dead alright." I heard one of them say.  
"Not the cleanest killing I've ever seen," Lenny said. "That's for sure."  
I began to cry.

I never found out what the killers wanted in the first place. Everything went black and I opened my eyes and shouted.  
"MOM, DAD, LOOK OUT!" Then cold water was splashed all over my face and I heard Shock's voice.  
"I told ya that it would wake him up, Barrel!"   
"Shock…what happened?" I asked as I rubbed my head.  
"You began screaming in your sleep like a friggin' idiot, that's what happened."  
"Where are we?" I asked. "Where's Oogie?"   
"We have no idea." Barrel replied. He seemed to have forgiven me for what I said. "As for Oogie, we escaped his torture chamber before he ate us."  
"This is bullshit." Shock said. "We've gotta get—"  
I looked around me while Shock spoke. It was still nighttime and we were in a forest with no leaves on the trees…it was weird. Everything seemed to be watching the three children who have made their way into this strange place. It was then; I made the decision to change our lives forever. "We don't need to go home." I told them simply.  
"WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?" Shock shouted. "We need to get home, Lock. People are gonna start worrying about us."  
I tried to persuade her by using logic. "No more Kronenbitter getting us in trouble."   
"Huh?"  
"And no more older kids pushing us around. And no one telling us what time to be in our rooms."  
Shock caught my drift. "No more stuff that looks like shit for dinner!"

We went back and forth like that for a few minutes and then Barrel joined in. "No more brushing our teeth before bed! And we don't even have to take a bath."  
Shock and I stared at him, but then ignored that second thing he said. We all began to cheer. "YAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!"  
We ran out of the forest and into a strange graveyard laughing and whooping it up.   
"This is gonna be so much fun!" Barrel cheered in his usual liveliness.

I heard barking behind me and I turned to see the ghost of a little puppy rushing towards me from the distance, floating above the ground slightly.  
"What's that?" I heard Shock asked from behind me.  
The ghost dog stopped in front me and his tongue hanged out; he barked happily.  
I looked down at the dog's red collar and thought that it couldn't be true. But then I looked down at the dog tag and I repeated the word on it.

"Zero…" I murmured slowly.  
"Who's Zero?" Barrel called to me.  
I felt like laughing. "Guys!" I yelled gleefully. "It's my puppy, Zero!"  
"Zero?" Shock said, trying to recollect something. "Didn't you tell us two weeks ago that he died when you were a little kid?"  
"Well, duh!" I said, thinking it weird that they couldn't tell that he was a ghost. "Well, he's here now! He's dead!"  
They all ran over and looked at him. I tried to pet him, but my hand fazed through the spectral mist that he was. "That figures…" I sighed.  
"He's so cute!" Shock said.  
"How'd he die?" Barrel asked.  
I hesitated for a minute and when I was about to say why, we heard a voice began speaking. "Ah, there you are, Zero!"  
We turned and a long and lanky skeleton strode up to us and bent down so we were level with him. "Welcome to Halloweentown!" he said with a smile.


	7. In Our Town Of Halloween

Chapter VII  
"In Our Town of Halloween"

We all screamed and fell over.  
"Don't be frightened!" the skeleton said with a happy grin. "You little guys new here?"  
Shock stood up and glared at him. "What's it to ya?"  
Jack stood back up and crossed his arms and looked at us like we were the most peculiar little things he had ever seen. "Now, exactly who are you?"   
"Lock!"  
"Shock!"  
"Barrel!"

Shock still glowered at him at him. "And just who the heck are you?"   
"Yeah!" Barrel and I said simultaneously.  
Jack face became mind-numbingly terrifying in the spirit of Halloween. "I'm…JACK!" he roared as his voice carried across the moonlit cemetery. All eyes were on him. "THE PUMPKIN KING!"   
Even Barrel, who I thought would be somewhat amused, jumped back in fear.  
Jack laughed heartily. "One last scare…it's past Halloween and…that's all for this year."

Jack strode past us with a grin and he kept on walking. "Thanks for finding my dog!" he called back as Zero zipped past us and followed Jack.  
I was dumbstruck and I ran after Jack and pulled his coattails. "What do you mean, 'your dog'?" I yelled at him.  
"I raised him from a puppy!" Jack said.  
I looked at Zero's collar and it was red. My dog's collar was blue.  
"I bought him at a shop." Jack explained.  
I let go of the coattails. "I'm sorry." I murmured as I tried to hold back tears.

Jack kept walking and I, deep in lamentation, wandered back to Shock and Barrel.  
"What's wrong?" Barrel asked me sincerely when one tear got through.  
My words kept breaking. "It's not my Zero." I choked.  
"My friend had a dog named Zero once," Shock told me as she put her hand on my shoulder, trying to make me feel better. "It's probably just a common dog name."  
I guess I had to believe her. I cheered up a little bit and wiped the tear that had quickly gotten to my chin. "Wanna go exploring?" I asked them.

They nodded and we pranced off in the direction that Jack went, even though we couldn't see him anymore. Shock thought up this weird little tune as we bounced along.  
She began to sing it. "La la la la la la, la la la la la! La la la la la la, la la la la la! We are all exploring, this is really cool—" she stopped so she could think up some sort of rhyme. "Oh!—whenever Barrel goes to sleep he always starts to drool!"  
Barrel glared at her. "No fair!"   
I sniggered.  
"Fine!" he told her. "Now I've gotta say something about you." He cleared his throat. "We're in Halloweentown; a place with chills and fright! Shock is such a wimp that she'll be scared all day and night!"  
I blinked and opened my eyes again to see both of them on the floor and Shock beating on her half-brother. I had to admit that Barrel's rhyme was much better than Shock's. I honestly didn't want them to spoil their fun so I tapped Shock's shoulder and screamed.  
"TAG! YOU'RE IT!"

Shock rocketed off her brother and bulleted after me. She was faster than I thought she was, keeping up with me the whole way. She kept trying to grasp the sewn-on tail on my devil costume to try and trip me. We chased each other around for fifteen minutes or so until we ran into Halloweentown Square. We stopped and stared at all the monsters going back to their crooked homes after a night of terror.  
"Wow…" we all whispered in unison after all was bare.  
Barrel had run away from us and was dancing on top of a winged serpent made of stone that was connected to the fountain. "Look at me, guys! I'm riding a dragon!"  
"Get down from there, idiot!" Shock commanded.  
"Make me!" he called back. We then heard that horrible voice again.  
"Well, well, well! What have we here? Three little brats, huh?"

We turned and saw Oogie in all his burlap "glory", if you can even say "glory", ooze through the bars and stride across the square over to us. He scooped us up in his arms and went back out the gates. We screamed for help but no one bothered to answer our cries. Perhaps they were scared of Oogie Boogie?


	8. Very Surprising

Chapter VIII  
"Very Surprising"

None of us paid attention to where we were going. We were too busy shrieking with our eyes closed. After what seemed like an eternity, he stopped.  
"SHUT UP!" he boomed.  
Boy, did we shut up. None of us could believe it; in a huge, misty pit where we couldn't even see the bottom, sitting on top of a gargantuan rock, was that creepy tree (but without the leaves) that I hid the knife in from our world. Once everyone was quiet, Shock just had to open her big mouth.  
"What the hell is this, a joke!"

"No joke, child." Oogie replied. "The tree, the one from your world is parallel to this one. You could say that Halloweentown is Earth but in another universe." Oogie became so quiet that we could hear the bugs squirming around inside him. The silence was, perhaps for us to realize something. I looked to the distance and saw a strange, spiral shaped hill. I turned my head back to the tree, and then to the hill again. The hill was the same distance from the tree in this world as the school up on the (normal) hill was from the tree by the lake. The pit served as the lake and Halloweentown served as the small urban area we had.  
"Why did you bring us here?" I asked him with my voice shaking.  
"I owe you…" he sneered looking down at me with a burlap grin.  
It was getting harder to breath under Oogie's heavy arms. Shock must have shared my concern when she began shrieking: "That's nice but…AS MUCH AS I LOVE THE SMELL OF YOUR FUCKING STINKING PITS, LET US GO!"  
Oogie dropped us all on the ground and lifted his hands up in the air.

The ground began shaking violently and a huge amount of rubble rose into the air from the forest behind us. Oogie directed his hands towards the tree and the debris followed. They circled around the tree at high speeds. Shock and I began lifting off the ground and began being sucked into the cyclone. Barrel grabbed us and we were able to stay put. Not that Barrel was fat, his weight was just…larger…let's go with that.

After what seemed like awhile, the wind died down and Shock and I fell to the floor.  
"May I present to you," Oogie said in his deep voice. "Your home."  
We all looked and gasped. It was a strange looking tree house that was all twisted in the shape of the tree. There was even a little drawbridge that we could walk up to get in.  
"Thank you…" Barrel finally said to break the silence.   
"But—" Oogie said when we were about to go in. "You three little midgets got me so addicted to these little insects," he pointed to his belly. "That in payment for your home, you must give me one bug for everyday as long as you continue to live here."   
"That's pretty dumb, if you asked me." Shock stated with her arms crossed.  
Oogie glowered at her. "Well, it's safe to assume that you're the feistiest of the midgets, correct?"  
Shock glowered back.  
"C'mon, Shock," Barrel said, tugging at her sleeve. "He's providing us with a home. The least you can do is just doing what he says."  
Shock now glared at her half brother. "Fine…but I won't like it."  
"Excellent…" Oogie said. "Now let's go see your abode." We all began to head towards the drawbridge when Oogie said. "Please, your ride is here."

A string hung from the bottom of the clouded pit. From out of the pit, hanging from the string, came a makeshift elevator made out of a cage. It was big enough for all three of us.   
"I'll meet you there." Oogie said as he took the drawbridge.  
The elevator didn't go up too fast, nor too slow neither.  
Perhaps this finally was the start of a brand new life.


	9. Tour

Chapter IX  
"Tour"

It looked like we were going to crash through the foundation of the Treehouse as the cage rose from the pit, but at the last minute, the floor actually opened up and the cage elevator, with us in it rose through it. Once the whole elevator had made it through the hole, it closed on its own, along with the opening of the door. Oogie was already there and it was a bit of a tight fit for him.  
"Welcome," the monster said, "To your home." It was lit only by candles and all the furniture looked somewhat strange; a small couch was actually a red and green couch chopped in half, and then put together. It was hard for me to think that this whole Treehouse was made out of trash. "Go ahead and look around."

Shock and I looked at some of the weird furniture while Barrel went exploring by himself. He said he found a room with a door shaped like a coffin and that it would be his room.  
"No, your sleeping on the couch, you dingbat."  
"Who are you calling 'dingbat', ugly?"  
Shock growled at him and gave him a dirty look. She screamed then.  
"What?" I said franticly, running to her.  
"Look at that thing!"  
I wished I hadn't. No more then three feet away from us was the largest bug I've ever seen. It was as big as my foot and looked like and extremely large ant. Its eyes were cartoon's; like googly eyes you would put on something you made in school.  
Barrel teased her smugly. "What's wrong, Emily," Barrel knew she hated being called that, "I thought you like bugs."  
"I—I do, but I've never seen one that big." Shock informed him.  
"LET'S SQUISH IT!" Barrel screeched with joy.

The bug seemed to know what he was saying, got scared and crawled into a crack in the floor, whimpering.   
Oogie strolled over to us, struggling a little bit due to his enormous size and the small ceiling he was under.  
"Common species of bugs here," Oogie explained. "You can find them anywhere around these parts. There has to be, at least, a thousand inside the bark of this tree, alone. Now you know what you'll be feeding me."  
"Wonderful…" Shock muttered sarcastically, trying to hide that she wasn't freaked out by the oversized creepy-crawly.  
The burlap creature walked to a whole in the wall decorated like a shrine. He gestured us to come over and when we looked down it, it seemed like a metal tube. In fact, before we entered the makeshift elevator, I saw a long, crooked steel tube going down the side of the Treehouse and entering the rock it was "perched" on.  
"This," Oogie said, "is where you will drop the bugs down to me." He pointed to a small cage on the floor, small enough to fit one of those large insects in. "Just drop it down the hole along with the bug inside and I'll take care of the rest. We start tomorrow."

With that, Oogie walked down the drawbridge and it shut behind him.


	10. We Make Mischief Day and Night

Chapter X  
"We Make Mischief Day and Night"

For the next few days, it was somewhat repetitive; we fed Oogie bugs through that little tube and we'd hear nothing from him except the burp from the other end when he through the cage back up. After about a week, we decided to explore Halloweentown. During the previous days, we discovered that the one of the Treehouse's "special features" was that it came with a walking bathtub we could ride in. We would ride it all over the Treehouse. Barrel would pretend to be a knight, or something and the walking tub would be his "trusty steed". Shock, having her devious mind, suggested something one day.  
"You know," she said slyly after we fed Oogie his daily bug, "We should go to Halloweentown and scare up a bit of fun!"  
"Like what kind of 'fun'?" I asked in reply.  
"Something creepy?" Barrel asked hopefully.  
"Maybe," she said quickly. "We'll see what we can do when we get there.

We rode through the forest in the bathtub where Oogie found that junk that made up our home. Shock, our self-appointed leader, said that she didn't know the exact way that Oogie took us, but she was pretty sure it was through here. Eventually (after about a half hour of being lost) we emerged from the forest and into Halloweentown Square.   
"Now what?" I asked her impatiently.  
"I'm thinking…" Shock said, rubbing her temples with her index finger.  
"Well, think faster! You're getting me all excited."

Shock was about to say something else, but a strange man walked past us. He was very corpulent, dressed in a black suit with a black hat on the top of his head, whose top stretched far. He was pale skinned, with a huge smile on his face and where a tie should have been, was a black widow spider. He had a badge that said the word "Mayor" on it; apparently being the mayor of Halloweentown. He had several scrolls under his arm. When he walked past us, another face was visible on the back of his head, this one even paler and it seemed to be sleeping. The Mayor strolled down Halloweentown Square and to a gate where an abnormal looking house was. First, a large flight of stairs led up to it. The house was triangular shape for the main part. But, jutting out of the side of the house was a crooked tower that reached high into the air. We evacuated the bathtub and followed him secretly for a couple of yards The Mayor was quite quick on his feet as he went up the stairs. He then knock  
ed on the door of the strange house and within a few seconds, Jack Skellington answered.   
"Greetings, Mayor." Jack said with a big grin.  
"Good news, Jack," the Mayor said in a deep, baritone voice, "I've got the plans for next Halloween! I need to go over them with you so we can get started on next year's project.  
"Of course, Mayor,"  
The Mayor went inside with Jack.

"That was weird…" I whispered, as if the Mayor might have been able to hear us.  
"That guy," Shock said loudly.  
"The Mayor dude?" Barrel asked, making sure he was thinking of the right person.  
"He's the one we're gonna play the prank on!" "What are we going to do?" I asked, wondering what Shock had up her sleeve.  
She plopped down on the ground. "I dunno yet…but it's gotta be something good, knowing that we screwed up that prank with Kronenbitter…"  
To tell the truth, I had actually forgotten about Kronenbitter and everyone at Happy Camper Orphanage. I began reminiscing about them and wondering what they would think if they could see me now. Since we came to Halloweentown, our faces became much paler. Mine and Barrel's faces were completely white; in fact, Barrel looked almost exactly like his skeleton mask. Shock's face became a pale green, to go with the theme of her costume. Apparently, I guess we were adapting to Halloweentown, in a way.  
"Come on, Lock!" I heard Barrel call from far away.  
I snapped out of my thoughts and looked in the direction he was calling from and he and Shock were on the other side of the square.  
"Coming." I called back to them.

After a bit of searching, we found a small bargain store in a different part of town called the Witches' Shop.  
The second we walked in, a tall, skinny witch at the counter with white hair said. "Welcome to the Witches Shop; the best bargain in town."  
"What are we looking for?" Barrel asked Shock anxiously.  
"Whatever we can find, really…" Shock answered looking on the shelves.  
I picked up a jar with an eyeball floating in the liquid inside. Once it started to stare at me, I put it back. I was about to look what was next to it on the shelf, when Barrel began talking to the witch.  
"Excuse me, ma'am, do you happen to have any Soul Robbers we can use?"  
"Yes, we do, child," the witch chuckled. She went in the back and came out with a green goopy looking blob in a jar. "That'll be 45 souls."  
"Oh," Barrel replied. "We only need it for a little while."  
The witch hesitated, but then gave it to him. "Just bring it back before 8:00, dearie."  
"Thank you, ma'am." Barrel said softly as he took the jar and walked out.   
Shock was dumbfounded, but also enraged that Barrel knew about something she didn't. "How did you know?" she growled at him.   
"I read books on the supernatural," Barrel retorted smugly back to her. "Nothing you would know about, considering you've never picked up a book."  
Shock blushed due to anger. "Do you want to say that to my face, Barrel?" she snarled with her teeth clenched.  
"Let's just get to work, shall we?" Barrel replied, trying to avoid violence.

Barrel's plan was nothing like Shock and I expected. He found a few bones and rubber bands lying on the ground and made slingshots out of them and gave two to us. Next, Barrel went into the forest and came back with some wood. He told Shock to go get "the stuff", by which, he meant weapons. For some reason, Oogie equipped our Treehouse with spears, axes, maces and all kinds of crazy stuff. Shock did as she was told. She rode back to the Treehouse in the tub, and came back about ten minutes later with what Barrel wanted. We all began shaping the wood into blocks, for Barrel wanted it that way. Barrel, instead, worked on making four small wheels. Shock brought back a primitive drill from the Treehouse and our cohort was pleased with it. He used it to attach the wheels to the two wooden blocks. Actually, they looked a lot like roller skates.

"We're ready." Barrel said, speaking for the first time in awhile. "What now?" Shock asked, she now being the impatient one. "Are we going to go roller skating or something?" she looked at me. "The moron only made two skates."  
"Not quite, sister," he said, trying to sound professional, "When the Mayor comes out, he's gonna have the surprise of his life."  
"I can't wait." Shock muttered, rolling her eyes.  
"Oh, and when I say 'go', hit the Mayor with your slingshots.

We waited for a few minutes until, finally, we heard Jack's door opened and he escorted the Mayor out.   
"Don't worry, Mayor," Jack said cheerfully. "This year's Halloween is going to be the most horrible yet! I guarantee it!"   
"Thank you for your help, Jack," the Mayor replied. "For, as you know, I am only an elected official and I can't handle all of this by myself!"  
Jack chuckled, went back in his home and closed the door behind him.  
The Mayor sang quietly to himself as he walked down the steps to the gate. "Boys and girls of every age, wouldn't you like to see something strange? Come with us and you will see, this, our town of Halloween. This is—"

The rest of the Mayor's song was interrupted by Barrel launching the Soul Robber and using it to whip the Mayor's back. He screeched loudly and began running. He stepped on the miniature roller skates Barrel made. This made the Mayor slip, and land headfirst into the fountain. The Mayor struggled and pulled his head out of the water, the extremely pale face now in the front.  
"What in Sam Hill is going on! He bellowed.  
We all guffawed stupidly, because, in fact, the Mayor looked pretty stupid as well.  
He automatically turned his head towards us. "Who are you!" he screamed in worry.   
We didn't know what to say, but Barrel thought of something. "Boogie's Boys!"  
"And one girl!" Shock interrupted.   
"Lock!"  
"Shock!"  
"Barrel!"  
We jumped back into the bathtub and headed for the forest as Mayor cursed at us from behind. Barrel left the Soul Robber in the Town Square. We all laughed and sang that stupid song we made up on Halloween night all the way home.

"I have to admit, Barrel," Shock said as she sat on the strange couch. "That was a pretty good prank."   
"It was nothing." Barrel replied modestly as he slurped up some soda.  
"Let's do another prank tomorrow!" I suggested with glee.

And we did one that next day. And the next day. And the next day. We plagued the town with Soon, about a month or so past and our names were known throughout Halloweentown: "Boogie's Boys: Lock, Shock, and Barrel.


	11. Kidnap the Sandy Claws

Chapter XI  
"Kidnap the Sandy Claws"

The Mayor was the target of our pranks, but sometimes it was the resident mad scientist, or that discombobulated creature that occasionally lurked inside a trashcan. Basically, our little rule was "everyone's a target". We didn't feed Oogie his daily bug yet, one day in December, but we heard barking coming from the drawbridge. I ran over and pulled it down and Zero was there.  
"Hey, Zero," I said, remembering when I met him, "What's up?"  
Zero barked happily.  
I spied a folded up piece between his collar and I took it out and Zero flew away into the partly-cloudy sky. I read the scrawled handwriting.

Dear Lock, Shock, and Barrel,

I am summoning you, specifically by name to the Town Hall for an immediate briefing. I am asking a favor out of you from the kindness of my not-beating heart. I know no one likes you 3 that much in Halloweentown, but I have faith that you little guys can pull off the job. Just cut through the line of people.

Sincerely, Jack Skellington.

"What is it, dipstick?" Shock screeched to me. She called us names like that when she was impatient.  
"We've gotta go to the Town Hall." I said.  
"Why?" Shock said plopping down on the couch. "The Mayor's probably gonna scold us when we get there."  
"No, it's Jack Skellington,"   
"Really?" Barrel said with joy. He admired Jack, in a way. "Then let's go!"  
Instead of taking the bathtub, we walked to the Town Hall with our slingshots Barrel made us, just in case the Mayor had something in store. We arrived and, like Jack had instructed, went to the front of the line. For fun, we launched our slingshots at the Mayor.

He was angry at first, but then he looked down and became nervous, remembering the prank we played on him. "What are you doing here!" he yelled anxiously.  
"Jack sent for us," I said.  
"Specifically…" Shock interrupted.   
"By name." Barrel finished.  
"Lock!"  
"Shock!"   
"Barrel!" he took a lick of his lollipop.  
The Mayor fussed around. "J-Jack…" he stammered. "It's B-Boogie's Boys!"  
"Ah," Jack said with glee. "Halloween's finest trick-or-treaters!"  
We nodded modestly.  
"Now, the job I have for you is top secret," he whispered. "It requires craft, cunning, mischief!" he made gestures with his hands.  
"And we thought you didn't like us, Jack!" Shock said as cutely as possible. We all giggled.  
"Absolutely no one is to know about this," Jack reminded, "Not a soul! Now…" he brought us closer to him and he whispered almost inaudibly. "Go into the forest and after walking a few miles you will come upon a tree with a design carved in its wood, this is a door. And if you open it, it will take you to a magical place called Christmastown. Once there, you are to work together to retrieve a person named 'Sandy Claws' and bring him back to me. Any questions?  
"Nope." We all responded in unison.  
I was about to walk away, but Jack tugged on my sewed-on tail and brought me back.  
"And one more thing," he said sternly, "Leave that no account Oogie Boogie out of this!"   
"Whatever you say, Jack." Barrel said.  
"Of course, Jack." Shock said quickly.  
"Wouldn't dream of it, Jack." I added.

We secretly had our fingers crossed behind our backs. I believed we all had the same thought at the moment which was: "What would Oogie think if instead of a bug, we gave him a Sandy Claws?" We all giggled as we strolled out of town as quick as our little legs could take us. We were silent until we got back to the elevator at the Treehouse. Then we sang to that dumb little tune again.  
"Kidnap Mr. Sandy Claws?" we asked in joy.  
"I wanna do it!" I offered.  
"Let's draw straws!" Barrel suggested.  
Shock shook her head and hit Barrel with her mask. "Jack said we should 'work together'."  
"Three of a kind," Barrel announced.  
"Birds of a feather," I said, remembering an old expression.  
"Now and forever!" we screeched. "Wheeeeee! La la la la la la, la la la la la, la la la la la la, la la la la la!" The cage elevator went up and we were inside. "Kidnap the Sandy Claws, lock him up real tight! Throw away the key and then, turn off all the lights."  
Shock remembered the bug and got the cage ready and Barrel put his lollipop in there for bait. "First, we're going to set some bait inside a nasty trap and wait, when he comes a-sniffing, we will snap the trap and close the gate!" Shock demonstrated this by using an axe to cut the string and the door sealed the bug inside the cage.  
"Wait," I sang to the tune, "I've got a better plan to catch this big, red lobster man!" Shock threw me the bug and I dipped it in some goopy green sauce Oogie enjoyed. "Let's pop him in a boiling post, and when he's done, we'll butter him up!"

We all began to sing again as Shock took the bug back from me and brought it to the tube that led to Oogie. "Kidnap the Sandy Claws, throw him in a box, bury him for 90 years, then see if he talks!"  
Shock dropped the bug down the pipe. "Then Mr. Oogie Boogieman,"  
"Can take the whole thing over, then!" Barrel and I said as we playfully bowed to where the pipe was.  
We all laughed a little. "He'll be so please, I do declare, that he will cook him rare! Wheeeeee!"   
Oogie laughed and munched from down below as we listened.  
Barrel sat on one of three catapults our house had as I walked over and sent him flying. "I say that we take a cannon, aim it at his door, and then, knock three times, and when he answers, Sandy Claws will be no more!"  
Barrel crashed through the door that he wanted to be his room and toddled out with a pot with a load of dust in it. He fell over upside-down  
"You're so stupid, think now," Shock yelled at me, waving her arms around crazily, "If we blow him up to smithereens, we may loose some pieces an then.."  
I caught on and finished the sentence with her as we lifted Barrel out of the pot. "…and then Jack will beat us black and green!

"Kidnap the Sandy Claws! Tie him in a bag, throw him in the ocean, then see if he is sad!"  
Shock and I threw Barrel into the tub, which was full of water, so all the dust washed off his face. We heard some commotion from down below and Shock and my voices became hushed. "Because Mr. Oogie Boogie is the meanest guy around! If I were on his 'Boogie List', I'd get out of town!  
We jumped in the bathtub and Barrel had drained all the water. The bathtub began walking through the door to the next room.  
"He'll be so pleased with our success," Barrel sand softly, "That he'll reward, too, I bet!"  
Shock and I joined in. "Perhaps he'll make his special brew of Snake and Spider Stew! Mmmmmmm…"  
Snake and Spider Stew was a dish made of guess what and surprisingly, it turned out delicious. Oogie only made it once for us, though.  
We all began to whisper. "We're his little henchmen and we take our job with pride. We do our best to please him and stay on his goods side."

Shock hopped out of the tub and strolled over to a small chamber behind a curtain where there were a few spears and maces tied up together.  
"I wish my cohorts weren't so dumb…" she sighed regretfully.  
"I'm not the dumb one!" Barrel retorted.  
"You're no fun!" I said, crossing my arms.  
"Shut up!" Shock screamed!  
"Make me!" I snapped back.  
Shock changed the subject as she dropped the weapons and picked up a small box. "I've got something; listen now, this one is real good, you'll see we'll send a present to his door, upon there'll be a note to read!" She accidentally conked Barrel in the head with a box and I smirked. "Now, in the box, we'll wait and hide, until his curiosity…"  
Barrel and I joined in. "…entices him to look inside and, then, we'll have him, 1, 2, 3!"

Shock opened the box and three scorpions jumped onto Barrel, like in her demonstration. He shook them off and we hopped into the tub, grabbing a black garbage bag with pumpkins drawn on it.  
"Kidnap the Sandy Claws! Beat him with a stick! Lock him up for 90 years, see what makes him tick!"

The drawbridge opened for us and we put our masks back on and the tub walked us into the forest.  
"Kidnap the Sandy Claws! Chop him into bits! Mr. Oogie Boogie is sure to get his kicks. Kidnap the Sandy Claws! See what we will see! Lock him in a cage, and then, throw away the keeeeeeeeey! Hahaha!" The tub took us into the darkness of the forest and all that was heard was our laughter.


	12. A Wrong Turn

Chapter XII  
"A Wrong Turn"

"How much longer?" Barrel kept asking much too often—every two minutes for the past hour.  
"Shut up!" Shock snapped. Then she hit him with her mask, or pulled a twig off one of the many trees and hit him with that.  
I, however, kept silent. To tell the truth, I was somewhat frightened of the woods. The only sound was Shock and Barrel bickering about something stupid, or the rhythmic walking of the bathtub. I was so terrified of complete silence for some reason. I was about to lose it when we came to a circle of trees that seemed normal—like the rest of them—except when our tub trekked into the circle, designs could be seen on the trees.

"Finally, we're here." Barrel sighed in relief as he hopped out and observed the stranger tree circle.  
I walked over to a tree with a depiction of an egg carved into it. "Shock, Barrel," I called over to them. "What do you make of this?"  
They were silent.  
"I think this is it." I assured them.  
"Look around you, Lock," Shock told me calmly, "There are 6 other trees; it could be anyone. I think it's the one with the tee painted on it"  
"I trust him." Barrel said. "Let's just try this one first."  
Slowly, I opened the door, but nothing was there. It was only black.  
"What the hell!" Shock raged. "That stupid skeleton wants us to go find this Slimy Claws—"  
"Sandy Claws." Barrel interrupted.  
"WHATEVER! And how does he expect us to find him if there's nothing in the goddamn tree?"  
Barrel contemplated for a moment, took the sack out of the tub, and jumped into the tree.  
"BARREL!" Shock screamed.  
He was laughing as he fell, we peered down and he got smaller, and smaller, and finally so small, that he disappeared, along with his laughter.  
Shock and I gulped. "Wow," I whispered in awe, "…long drop."

I stepped up on the rim of the whole and was about to jump, but Shock grabbed my hand. I turned to look at her and she had a fearful look in her eyes.   
"Shock?"  
"Do you think he's okay?"  
"I'm sure he is…" I said pretty optimistically, but it turned pretty pessimistic at the end.  
"He's always charging head on into danger like that. Pretty much the way he got the name 'Barrel'. Wanna hear the story?"  
"Not really. Let's jump."  
"Lock, I'm scared."  
Those are two words I thought I'd never come out of Shock's mouth. "Really?"  
She nodded fearfully.  
I took her hand and we both stood on the rim of the egg and we jumped. 

We fell down at a furious speed. I closed my eyes and it felt like we were falling for a long time. Eventually, we landed in a pile of something. I opened my eye and discovered they were plastic eggs.   
I popped up out of the pile. "Where the hell are we?" "Where's Barrel?" Shock said frantically, digging through the plastic eggs.  
Barrel popped out of the pile next to his half-sister. "Here I am." he stated quickly. "Were you worried about little old me?" Barrel asked mockingly.  
"No." she denied quickly with her arms crossed.  
I was barely listening. "Guys, will you shut up for one frigging second?"  
They were quiet.  
"Look…"

The sky was the brightest if blue and the grass was greener than the grass back in our world. There were tiny, fluffy, yellow chicks running around. All the houses were shaped like eggs and there was a huge pink rabbit hopping along a path made of bricks. He was carrying a basket full of eggs and wore a beige sash that read "Happy Easter". Before anyone could say or do anything else, Shock started screaming.  
"THAT'S SANDY CLAWS! GET HIM!" she grabbed the sack from Barrel, hopped out of the pile and started charging towards Sandy Claws and Barrel and I staggered to our feet and followed her  
The rabbit turned towards us and saw Shock, with her hideous expression, screaming "kidnap the Sandy Claws!" at the top of her lungs and her two little friends trailing behind. It saw that Shock was after it, so it let out a short, high-pitched scream, and began hopping the other way.  
"Come back here!" Shock said, waving her arms in the air, sack in one hand.

After the rabbit went into the small town, he was out of sight and Shock plopped down on a small knoll outside of town.  
"Damn…" she sighed disappointedly. "I thought we'd catch that Sandy Claws for sure…"  
"Don't worry," I said, "All we gotta do is corner him and then we'll have him."  
Barrel patted her shoulder. "C'mon, he's just waiting for us to get him!"  
Shock stood back up. "Alright, weirdoes," she said as she smirked, shaking off her despair, "Here's the plan; we'll go into the little village, and I'll chase after him and try to lead him into some sorta dead end. Then, you guys'll bag 'im." She talked like she was a general in the army. "Everyone got it?"  
Barrel and I held our hands to our foreheads in salute. "Sir, yes, sir!"  
She glared at us.   
"Oh, sorry," Barrel said quickly.  
"Ma'am, yes, ma'am!" we said.  
She smiled. "Good! Now mooooove out! 

Shock ran into town and Barrel and I climbed up on house roofs that were parallel to each other. They weren't very high. We watched the streets below and in a heartbeat, we saw the rabbit. It was hopping around frantically, but it stopped for a breather.  
"Hey, Sandy," Shock called from behind the rabbit.  
The rabbit turned slowly, and screamed when it saw Shock.  
"Heh, heh, heh," Shock laughed playfully, "Trick…or…treat?" she dashed and the rabbit dove in-between the two houses—Shock's trap was working like a charm.  
The rabbit realized he was trapped.  
I jumped down and held the rabbit still. "This won't hurt a bit, Sandy," I assured him a he tried to wriggle free.  
Barrel hopped down from his building with the sack and, at last, Sandy Claws was bagged.  
We dragged Sandy to where the pile of eggs was and, in an instant; we were teleported back to the circle of trees somehow. We loaded the bag with Sandy Claws in it into the tub and trekked back to the town hall. We entered the doors, thinking how proud he would be.  
"Jack, Jack!" we all yelled. "We caught him! We caught him!"   
"Perfect!" Jack shouted with glee. He strolled over to us with his big, long legs. "Open it up, quickly!"  
We untied the noose and the rabbit hopped out.  
"That's not Sandy Claws!" Jack said with a chuckle, perhaps thinking we were playing a joke.  
"It isn't?" Shock said, dumbfounded.  
"Who is it?" Barrel asked.

Our fake Sandy Claws hopped across Town Hall to a strange looking creature with an axe in his head. The rabbit sniffed him for a minute, but got scared.  
"BUNNY!" the creature said.  
The rabbit screamed and dove back in our bag to hide.  
"Not Sandy Claws," Jack said disappointedly. "Take him back!"  
"But, we followed your instructions!" I said in despair because our work was for naught.  
"Yeah," Barrel agreed, "We went through the door!"  
"Which door? There's more than one" Jack said, getting a bit annoyed. He took a cookie shaped like a tree out of his shirt pocket. "Sandy Claws is behind the door shaped like this!"  
Shock began choking me. "I TOLD YOU!" she said, reminding me that she suggested it before.  
"Get off me!" I yelled.

Before any of us knew it, we were all beating upon each other until we heard an extremely frightening roar from behind us. Jack made it to calm of down. He looked at the bag that the rabbit was in.  
"I'm very sorry for the inconvenience, sir." He looked at us. "Take him home first."   
We started out the door as the bathtub followed.  
"And apologize again! Be careful with Sandy Claws when you fetch him! Treat him nicely."  
"Got it!" I called back.  
"We'll get it right." Shock said.  
"Next time!" we all called back. 

It took us awhile to find the tree circle again, but we did. We dumped the bunny down the Egg door and headed for the door with the tree on it. Barrel opened it up and again, like the Egg door, it was nothing but black inside. But, in a matter of seconds, a blizzard of snow rushed out and sucked us in and the door shut behind us.


	13. Nabbed

Chapter XIII  
"Nabbed"

We fell through a spinning blue vortex with snowflakes flying around in it. If you asked me,  
I definitely had enough of supernatural things like this for one lifetime. In a moment, or so, we were laying flat on a snow covered hill (a wooded sign was on it that read "Yuletide Hill") and we were able to look down at a rather tiny town below. This time, the tub came with us.  
"Is this Christmastown?" I asked as we all got up.  
"I guess so," Shock said with a sigh, "Let's go find that Sandy Claws."

We rode the tub through the town aimlessly without a clue what Sandy Claws looked like. In a little bit, we came by a little child, about our height, wearing green pajamas…or something.  
"Hey, kid," Shock said to him.  
The kid turned around. "Oh, hi, stranger!" he said with a cheerful grin. "Is this your first time to Christmastown?"  
"Um, yeah," Barrel answered for Shock. "Would it be too much trouble to ask where we could find Sandy Claws?"  
"Who?"  
"Sandy Claws."  
"Oh, you must mean 'Santa Claus'. Well, he's in his workshop right now, probably checking his list twice."   
"Where's the workshop?" I asked politely.  
The kid pointed down the snow covered street. "Just down there and there will be a big red house—ya can't miss it."

We thanked the kid and we were on our way again. Soon enough, we were at our destination—Sandy Claws' front porch. We heard him talking inside; perhaps checking his so called "list".  
"Kathleen, Bobby, Susie—yes, Susie's been nice—Nice, nice, naughty. Nice, nice, nice—there are hardly any naughty children this year.  
We grabbed our sack and rang his doorbell which played a cheery tune.   
"Now who could that be?"  
Sandy stepped out onto his porch.  
"Trick or Treat?" we said with the bag open.  
"Huh?"   
"Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeah!" We jumped onto him and trapped him in the bag.  
"LET ME GO!" he yelled from the inside.  
"Not a chance!" Shock said. "You're our ticket to bigger and better things around Halloweentown."  
"I can't believe it was that easy!" I laughed heartily.  
We hauled the bag into the tub with extreme force, but we were finally able to do it. We sat on top of the sack as the tub carried it, and us, back to Yuletide Hill. And, like in the other town, we were sucked out of Christmastown and we were back in the Tree Circle.  
"What do you want from me?" Sandy yelled.  
"Shut up!" Shock said, picking up a stick from the ground and hitting the bag with it.  
"Ouch!"  
Shock turned to Barrel and I. "Come on," she sighed as she gestured her head towards the way we came into the Tree Circle, "Let's get back to the skeleton and show him our haul."

We rambled on back to Town Square. Shock and I got off the tub and walked for most of the way while Barrel still sat on top. Jack was dressed like Sandy and he was looking in a mirror whispering to himself.  
"Jack, we caught him!" we all yelled with glee.  
Jack noticed us and strolled over.  
"This time, we really did!" I added.  
"He sure is big, Jack!" Barrel said in amazement.  
"And heavy!" Shock said, remembering how we lugged him into the bathtub.  
We opened the bag and Sandy popped out. "LET ME OUT!"  
All the creatures of Halloweentown gasped.  
"Sandy Claws," Jack whispered joyfully, "In person! What a pleasure to meet you!" Jack took Sandy's hand and looked at it. "Why, you have hands! You don't have claws at all!"  
"Where am I?" Sandy gasped.   
"Surprised, aren't you?" Jack asked. "I knew you would be! You don't have to have another worry about Christmas this year!"  
Sandy Claws was flabbergasted.  
"Consider this a vacation, Sandy; a reward! It's your turn to take it easy!"   
Shock, Barrel, and I listened to the awkward conversation.  
"But there must be some mistake!" Sandy asked, still hopelessly confused.  
Jack said as he gestured to us to shut the sack again. "Just a second, fellas!" He studied Sandy for a minute and then took his hat. "Of course! That's what I'm missing! Thanks."   
"Now, hold on," Sandy ordered. "You can't just—"   
"See that he's comfortable!" Jack said.  
We closed the bag up and headed out the gates.  
"Where are we taking him?" Barrel asked both of us.  
"Where?" Shock repeated.  
I thought for a minute. "To Oogie Boogie, of course! There isn't anywhere in the whole world more comfortable then that!" I smirked. "And Jack said to make him comfortable, didn't he?"  
"Yes," Shock and Barrel said in unison, "he did."  
Sandy grunted. "Haven't you heard of peace on Earth, and goodwill towards men?"   
"NO!" we all screamed. We all laughed.

The sun was already set when we were at the Treehouse. We brought Sandy to the shrine that we dropped the bugs down to Oogie.  
"Don't do this!" Sandy ordered. "Naughty children never get any presents!"   
We stuffed Sandy down the pipe, but he would only fit halfway, so we got the plunger, pitchfork, and broom that Shock brought from our world and began stuffing him down with them.  
"I think he might be too big!" Shock said as she smacked Sandy with her broom.  
"No, he's not;" I explained. "If he could fit down a chimney, he can fit…down…here!"  
We managed to break him and Sandy went sliding down the tube, screaming all the way.

We listened after the screaming stopped.  
"What's happening, what's happening!"  
"Get a grip," I said, "I dunno!"  
"Hey, guys," Barrel said. He was pointing to the cage elevator. We smiled.  
"Let's go down…" Shock whispered.  
"…And take…" I continued.  
"…A peak!" Barrel finished.  
We all screamed with joy. "Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyy!"   
Shock, Barrel, and I grabbed some candy and soda. Barrel and I ran into the elevator after we got some snacks.  
"Hurry, hurry!" Barrel called to Shock, who was getting a worm out of her popcorn.   
We rode the elevator down and we peaked inside a whole in the bottom of the Treehouse to witness the weirdest performance ever.


	14. Oogie Boogie's Song

Chapter XIV  
"Oogie Boogie's Song"

To tell the truth, we never saw the inside of Oogie's lair. It was the cross between a torture chamber and a casino. The lights became very weird colored and Sandy's outfit turned from red to a deep purple. Oogie cast his huge shadow over Sandy. The light made his color green.

"Well, well, well," Oogie sang, "What have we here? Sandy Claws, huh? Ooh, I'm really scared!" he revealed the bugs inside him to Sandy as they wriggled out of his mouth and into Sandy's beard.  
"You're jokin', you're jokin, I can't believe my eyes!" You're jokin' me, you've gotta be! This can't be the right guy! He's ancient!" he held Sandy up to him. "He's ugly!" he dropped him. "I don't know which is worse! I might just split a seam now if I don't die laughing first!

"Mr. Oogie Boogie says 'there's trouble close at hand!' You'd better pay attention now, cuz I'm the Boogieman!" He picked Sandy up and started swinging him around. "And if you aren't shakin', there's somethin' very wrong! Cuz this may be the last time you hear the Boogie Song." He dropped Sandy and his decorations began moving. "Whoa-oh!"

"Whoa-oh!" his monsters groaned.   
"Whoa-oh!"  
"Whoa-oh!"  
"A-whoa-oh!"   
"A-whoa-oh!"  
"I'm the Oogie Boogieman!" he continued to sing. "Well, if I'm feelin' antsy and I've nothin' much to do, I might just cook a special batch of Snake and Spider Stew and doncha know the one thing, that would make it work so nice? A roly-poly Sandy Claws to add a little spice!"

"Whoa-oh!" his monsters sang.  
"Whoa-oh!" Oogie repeated.  
"Whoa-oh!"   
"Whoa, oh, oh, oh!"  
"Whoa-oh!"  
"YEAH! I'm the Oogie Boogieman!"

"Release me now," Sandy sang to the tune, "Or you must face the dire consequences! The children are expecting me, so please come to your senses!"  
Oogie dragged Sandy and began spinning him around. "Ha! You're jokin', you're jokin'! I can't believe my ears! Will someone shut this fella up? I'm drownin' in my tears! He's funny, I'm laughin!" he looked down at Sandy who was on the ground. "And now," he whispered, revealing his snake tongue, "with your permission, I'm gonna do my stuff!"  
"Well," Sandy said, his voice shaking, "What are you going to do?"  
"I'm gonna do the best I can!" Oogie said quickly. 

"Whoooooooooooooooooooooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!" the casino lit up. "The sound of rollin' dice, to me, is music in the air cuz I'm a gambin' Boogieman; although I don't play fair! It's much more fun," he said as he attached Sandy to a pulley, "I must confess, with liiiiives on the line! Not mine, of course," he turned to Sandy, "But yours, old boy, now that'd be just fine!"  
Sandy was being pulled up towards the ceiling. "Release me fast, or you will have to answer for this heinous act!"   
"Oh, brother," Oogie said as he controlled the movement of the pulley with a handle, "You're something! You put me in a spin! You aren't comprehenden' the position that you're in! It's hopeless; you're finished! You haven't got a prayer! Cuz I'm Mr. Oogie Boogie, and you ain't goin' nowhere! MUAHAHAHA!"  
We all guffawed.


	15. Watching

Chapter XV  
"Watching…"

We all ate our little snacks eagerly as Oogie picked up his dice.  
"Are you a gamblin' man, Sandy?" Oogie asked teasingly. "Let's play!"  
Oogie was interrupted by the sound of metal clanking. The gambling Boogieman turned around to investigate and he spied an attractive, pale blue female leg sliding through the door of the casino.  
"My, my…" he said, transfixed. He nudged Sandy. "What have we here?" he spit out a bug and oozed over to the leg. He popped the sock off and started tickling the foot. "A-tickle, tickle tickle…"  
"Wow," Shock whispered sarcastically, "Oogie's quite the ladies' man, ain't he?"

Meanwhile, two hands slid down the rope. One covered Sandy's mouth, and one pointed upwards. Sandy looked up and a red haired woman, who had skin to match the leg—and had no hands—whispered something inaudibly to Sandy. The hands untied Sandy while Oogie still tickled the leg. The woman dropped a rope ladder and Sandy began climbing up it. We turned our heads to Oogie and the leg he was playing with slipped through the door and it wasn't connected to anything.

"WHAT!" Oogie screamed in both astonishment and anger. "You tryin' to make a dupe outta meeeee!" he gasped when he saw Sandy trying to escape with Sally. Oogie began roaring unbelievably loud. It began sucking in all sorts of small debris from the casino into his mouth. In a few seconds, The woman and Sandy were flying toward him and he caught them both in his grasp. He turned his head to the woman who was in this right arm.   
"Now, what's your name, gorgeous?" Oogie said, flirtingly.   
She hesitated.  
"TELL ME!"  
"S—sally…" she stuttered, fearing for her life.  
"Ah, good…too bad I have to kill you; what a shame."  
Sally gasped.  
Oogie laughed as he turned to Sandy. "And don't think you're off the hook, Mr. Claws, because my beautiful Sally girl, here, is only an appetizer! Hahaha!  
Sally screamed.  
"Keep on screamin', lovely, cuz no one will ever hear you!"  
"Wow!" Barrel said. "Oogie's the coolest villain ever!"  
"I guess so." I replied.  
"Shut up, you morons!" Shock yelled in a whisper. "I wanna see what happens next!"

We shut up and, before we knew it, Sally's leg was back on, she and Sandy were tied up and they were both lying on a table that was precariously perched over a pit of lava. There was a lever behind the table. That perhaps controlled its movement.   
"You wait until Jack finds out about this!" Sally shouted at Oogie as Oogie tossed his dice in the air and caught them. "By the time he's through with you, you'll be lucky if—"  
Sally was interrupted by the Mayor on a blasting PA system. He sounded like he was in tears. "The King of Halloween has been blown to smithereens! Skeleton Jack is now a pile of dust."  
Now nothing could stop the "show" we were watching. We were actually having quite a bit of fun watching Oogie torture these two people. We all began to dance around. "Pile of dust, pile of dust, Skeleton Jack is a pile of dust!"  
The Mayor's mournful announcement silenced after awhile.  
Oogie strode over to the table and leaned on Sandy so his face was mere inches away from Sally's. "What's that you were sayin' about luck, rag doll?"  
"Help, help, help!" Sally shrieked at the top of her lungs.  
"Seven!" Oogie said as he rolled his dice. "It's Oogie's turn to boogie, now!" He pulled the lever 7 times so the table would start to tilt. "A-one, a-two, a-three, a-four, five, six, seven! Ahahahahaha!" 

All three of us giggled. Before we knew it, the cage started shaking.  
"What the hell?" Shock said.  
We all looked up, and Jack Skellington—yup, the dude who was supposed to be gone forever—was perched on top of the cage and shaking it.  
"ZOMBIE!" we all screamed and we scampered out of the cage and up the rope, and to the outside of the pit.  
"HE'S SUPPOSED TO BE DEAD!" I screamed to Shock and Barrel and disbelief.  
"That's what we all thought, genius." Shock said catching her breath. She was about to yell at me some more—but stopped. "We should tell someone."   
"Why bother?" I asked. "They'll find out eventually."   
"Wait, stay with me on this; we'll be able to get respect if we reveal that Jack's alive! We will become, like, town heroes or something!"  
I thought for a moment. "Yeah…" I said with a smirk.  
"Aww…" Barrel moaned. "I wanna see the fight!"   
"NO!" Shock yelled. "COME ON!"


	16. Heroes?

Chapter XVI  
"Heroes?"

Barrel reluctantly followed us back to Halloweentown where the monsters were sprawled out in the middle of Town Square sleeping. I remembered that they all loved Jack very much and I remembered that my mom told me that to keep the pain away, people sleep. I guess that's what they were doing. Barrel spotted the Mayor walking sadly up the steps of the Town Hall.  
"Mayor, Mayor!" we shouted as we ran over to him.  
The Mayor turned around. "Oh, it's you three little brats…listen, I'm not in the mood for your pranks today; something very terrible has happened."  
Barrel jumped up. "But you're never in the mood for—"  
Shock covered Barrel's mouth.  
"Jack Skellington," the Mayor continued, "has met his demise; Skeleton Jack is now a pile of dust."  
"Yeah, yeah," I said, "We heard. But Jack's alive!"  
"What!" the Mayor said in disbelief.  
"We'll show ya!" Barrel said.  
The pessimistic face on the Mayor turned to optimistic. "Where is he?" 

We rode in the Mayor's hearse to the Treehouse.  
"Stop here." Barrel told him.  
"So this is where you guys have been hiding…" the Mayor said under his breath.  
We went around to the other side of the Treehouse where Sally had snuck in. I looked up into the sky and saw a streak of gold piercing the night air coming out of the Treehouse.  
We all peaked in.  
"Jack, Jack!" the Mayor yelled.  
Jack happened to be very close to Sally.  
"Here he is!" I said.  
"Alive!" Barrel added.  
Shock looked at the Mayor. "Just like we said!"  
The Mayor threw down a rope for Jack. "Grab a hold, my boy!"  
Jack took Sally's hand and the Mayor pulled both of them up.

Me, Shock, Barrel, Jack, Mayor, and Sally all rode back to Town Square. Mayor honked the horn, and the monsters woke up, saw Jack and broke into song.  
"La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la! La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la!"   
"Jack!" the Cyclops exclaimed.  
"Jack's back!" a corpse said.  
"Jack?"  
"Jack's okay!"  
"He's alright!"  
They all began to sing, including us. "Jack's okay and he's back! Okay! He's alright! Let's shout, make a fuss, scream it out! Whee! Jack is back, now everyone sing in our town of Halloween!"  
"It's great to be home!" Jack said to everyone.  
We heard Sandy Claws from up above. "Ho, ho, ho!" he chortled. "Happy Halloween!"  
"Merry Christmas!" Jack yelled towards the sky. Then Sandy brought snow to Halloween! The snow filled Town Square quickly.  
"What's this?" a child sang.  
"What's this?" Cyclops said.  
"I haven't got a clue!" Harlequin Demon exclaimed.  
"What's this?" Mr. Hyde asked.  
"Why," Clown sang, "It's completely new!"   
"What's This?"  
"Must be a Christmas thing." Werewolf said.  
"What's This?"  
"It's really very strange!" The Mayor said.

Everyone began frolicking and playing in the snow. Jack stepped down from the Town Hall's stairs.   
"Check this out," Shock said as she dragged us behind the fountain. She made a snowball and hurled it over the fountain.  
We heard someone grunt and we peaked over the ridge to see. Jack had snow on his face and he chuckled.  
We giggled and ducked back down.  
"POW!" Shock laughed with a punching gesture. "Right in the kisser!"  
"I wanna try!" Barrel pleaded.  
Shock sighed. "Fine…" she made him a snowball and handed it to him."   
Barrel hopped up on the ridge. He spied Jack and was about to throw the snowball when he slipped and fell onto the green ice in the fountain—which was water mere minutes ago.  
"Ouch!"  
"Are you okay?" I asked.  
"Yeah," Barrel rubbed his head. He lifted up the snowball again, but stopped. "Hey, where'd he go?"   
Jack had disappeared from sight; we scanned the Town Square twice when Shock caught view of him.  
"There he goes!"

Jack slipped through the Guillotine Gate and into the Cemetery. We followed him, Barrel leading the way; he really wanted to hit Jack "right in the kisser", as Shock had said. We slipped down the snow covered path for a good two minutes until we got to the most famous landmark in Halloweentown, Spiral Hill. Our heads lifted up to the crest to see Jack and Sally kissing each other on the mouth rather passionately.  
Mine and Shock's mouth dropped.  
Barrel began to sing teasingly. "Sally and Ja-ak, sitting in a tree! K-I-S-S-I-N-G! Ahahahahaha!"  
Jack pulled away from sally and whipped around. "Well, well, well!" Jack said with a smirk. "If it isn't the three little heroes!"  
"Huh?" I said.  
"You guys revealed to everyone I was alive!"  
"I can't believe Oogie didn't kill you. What'd you do," I asked him truthfully, "Arrest him?"  
Jack looked at us. "Oogie Boogie was killed during battle."  
My eyes widened. "No way!" I whispered in astonishment.  
"Yup," Jack said, "and—" Jack got hit in the face with a snowball. "Very funny, Barrel. Anyway, he'll never bother any of us again."  
"Yeah," Sally agreed softly. Jack and his lover walked away slowly with joined hands and exited the area.  
All three of us were dumbfounded for a moment. I ran to the top of Spiral Hill. "Whoo-hoo! He's gone! No more Oogie Boogieman!"  
"How's this good, genius?" Shock asked with her arms crossed. "He was our guardian. Not a good one, but, you get the idea."  
"Well," I explained, "We don't have to feed the guy anymore."  
"And," Barrel said, running to the summit with me, "We can play with all the neat toys in his lair."   
"YAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYY!" we all yelled.


	17. An Awkward Christmas

Chapter XVII  
"An Awkward Christmas"

We hobbled through the newly fallen snow back to our, now, snow covered Treehouse. The cage elevator went up slower than usual because of the ice on the rope, though we managed to get there. It was much to cold to do anything, really. We decided unanimously that we would raid Oogie's lair tomorrow. We all shivered in our bunks that night. The only other noises we heard were the Treehouse creaking in the wind and Barrel snoring.  
"BARREL!" Shock screamed after a two hour session of listening to Barrel.  
Barrel awoke instantly and fell out of his bed. "What is it, are we under attack!"  
I laughed.  
"No, lumpy," she said as she pulled her head under the blanket, "You snore like Homer Simpson with a stuffed-up nose, now go back to bed and stifle that snoring!"  
Barrel grumbled incoherently as he crawled back to bed. Though, I heard him say "it would be cool if we were under attack."

During the night, my bed became extremely uncomfortable and I needed to sleep somewhere else. The bathtub was always in the corner, so why not? I dragged my blanket over and climbed in. Shock and Barrel were in there two, sleeping, unaware of the other's—or mine, for that matter—presence. They were both shivering wildly. I covered both of them, along with myself, with the blanket. I was going to get back in bed, but I looked at them in thought. What would my life be like if these guys didn't come along? I'd probably still be being smacked around being the reject of the school like some snotty, crumpled up tissue. Even though my life was a little weird because of them, I owed everything to Shock and Barrel. Heck, if it wasn't for them, I would be dead. And I'm glad I wasn't. They have become my best friends in the whole world. Then again, I think they were my only friends in the whole world. I fell asleep dwelling on the thought. 

I woke up early the next morning when the air still had quite a chill. I looked out the window to see that the snow had risen a few feet and I could still see my own breath, glistening in the morning sun. I looked to where Shock and Barrel were and they were gone. I contemplated for a minute and the thought of Christmas dawned on me. I barely remembered when we had it back at my house and I never remembered it until now. I had to get Shock and Barrel something for Christmas. Because I didn't know what else to do, I made a wreath for Shock out of some old leaves that were lying around the Treehouse. It wasn't that big, but at least it was something. Now for Barrel. What would someone like him enjoy getting as a gift? It's not like he was the most normal person I've ever known; so I had to get him something unique. I recalled that Barrel was pretty interested in supernatural things; one instance being that he knew all about Oogie Boogie before we even met the burlap monster. The only problem was that I needed money to buy anything supernatural. I decided to make him something. I thought about all our time together and thought about what he may like. I thought of how much joy he got when he wanted to squish that bug. I decided I'd make him inanimate bug out of the rubble lying around.

Once my presents for them were completed, the cage rose through the trap door and Shock and Barrel walked out with large bags in their hands.  
"Hey there, Rip Van Winkle." Shock said when she saw me. Shock took a scarf and a small jacket out of the bag and handed them to me, blushing deeply. "Merry Christmas, Lock…" she whispered.  
"Thanks…" I said. I felt myself blush back.  
"Hey, Shock!" Barrel called from the other room.  
Shock looked and Barrel was making kissy lips with the air. He plopped down on the ground and laughed. Shock stormed over and gave him a powerful slap across the face.  
"I WAS ONLY KIDDING!" Barrel yelled at her.  
Shock stomped her way over to the next room and slammed the door behind her.  
"What a witch…" Barrel muttered.  
"How'd you guys get the money for this?" I asked as I was curious to find out what was in Barrel's bag.  
"It's Christmas, Lock," Barrel reminded me, "The Witches' Shop is givin' stuff away free."

He took out a small box out of his bag and handed it to me. "Merry Christmas, buddy!"  
I looked at the box and recognized it as a jack-in-the-box. Honestly, I expected something more. I searched for the winding handle, but there was none. We both stared at it for a few seconds. Before I knew it, a huge scary, clown face on a spring jumped out at me from the box. I fell over in fright and Barrel and I laughed loudly.  
"Thanks, Barrel." I said catching my breath. "I gotta go give Shock her present."  
"I'm not helping you if she slaps you."  
I went in the room that she exited to and she was on the floor throwing a pebble against the wall and catching it. "Barrel…" she murmured softly, "What a—".  
"Hi, Shock." I said.  
She turned her head quickly. "Lock!" she gasped. "Oh, hi. I didn't see you there."  
"That's alright…I made you this." I handed her the makeshift wreath. "Merry Christmas, Shock."  
She was silent of a few seconds. "Why are you giving this to me?"  
I was confused. "Because you're my friend."  
"Really?" she asked, her eyes lighting up, "Even though I push you and Barrel around, call you both names, and made you dig up bugs for a week back at school?"  
"Well, I hang out with you don't I?"  
She was in tears now. "Oh, Lock, you have no idea how much this piece of crap means to me!"   
"I think she means 'thank you'." Barrel said as he walked in.  
"Your welcome, Shock." I sighed as I hugged her back.   
Barrel giggled, but we ignored him. Shock and I were a bit closer ever since. She didn't call me names as often. I think we all became a bit closer the Christmas Day. But nothing would prepare us for what would happen next.


	18. ADOPTED?

Chapter XVIII  
"ADOPTED!"

It was about two weeks after Christmas when we heard a knock at our drawbridge. Barrel pulled down the rope and the Mayor stood there with his pessimistic face on.   
"Hey, it's that fat guy." Barrel said quickly.  
"No time for chatter," the Mayor explained. "May I come in?"   
"SHOCK!" Barrel screamed to her. "CAN THE MAYOR COME IN!"  
"AS LONG AS HE DOESN'T POOP ON THE CARPET!" she yelled back.  
Barrel turned back towards the Mayor. "Yeah, just don't p—"  
"Yes, yes, I know…" the Mayor grumbled. 

He sat down next to Shock on that weird looking couch. Barrel and I were on the floor.  
"Well, children," he began with a sigh, "as you can see, you kids obviously have no legal guardian. Before Oogie Boogie's untimely demise, he was technically the one that watched over you."  
"He wasn't very good at his job," I explained, "We had to feed him instead of it being the other way around."  
"Yes." The Mayor said. "We took a vote, back in Halloweentown, to see what to do with you and we decided…well, that you should be…" he said the last part with a sigh. "…adopted."   
The words came at us like someone was sticking a sword up our butts. "ADOPTED!" we screamed.  
"NO WAY!" Shock screeched at him. "Emily Jennifer 'Shock' Sorcičcre does not take orders from a fat tub of lard like you!"  
Barrel stood up. "Yeah!"   
"We'll fight you!" I blurted out randomly as I stood up, too.  
"Good idea!" Shock said quickly. "READY THE WEAPONS!"

All three of us ran into our room, screaming war cries of all kind. We grabbed our masks and put them on. I threw the others their slingshots and I held on to mind. We all faced the door with our slingshots ready.  
"What's the plan?" I whispered to Shock.  
"What do you think, dipstick, just launch 'em at Mayor when he comes in."  
"Sounds good to me."   
"Barrel, open the door."  
I could hear the Mayor jiggling the handle to the door.  
"Wait," I said, "I've got a better plan to fool this guy."  
"Well," Shock said crossing her arms, "I'm listening."  
I strolled over to the air vent in the back of the room. I pried it open so we could all crawl in. "All aboard."  
Shock looked a bit grossed out, but Barrel ditched the other plan right away.

To ease Shock, I went first. Then Shock, then Barrel. It was a winding maze of pipes and such that I didn't even know we had in our walls. The only one I knew of was the tube that we used to drop a bug down to Oogie Boogie. We dubbed it "the Bug Pipe." "So what are we looking for?" Shock said to me.  
I put a finger to my mouth and shushed her. "Shh..." I hushed. "Well, an escape obviously."  
"Where are you, you little brats?" we heard a muffled Mayor's voice say from not so far above.  
Barrel giggled and banged on the pipe's ceiling and we heard the Mayor let out a yelp of fright.  
"The floor!" the Mayor whispered to himself. "Of course!"  
We giggled softly and continued on our journey.  
After a few minutes of silent sneaking through the rusty, dusty vents, I spied a light at the end of one of the pipes.  
"Guys, look at that!"  
They grinned and we crawled closer.

In my excitement, I failed to realize that there was a hole in our metallic path, leading to another pipe.  
"Get ready to see the light of daaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyy…" I fell.  
I was tumbling down the chute at an unimaginable speed. I heard Shock (screaming "Lock, you idiot!") and Barrel (laughing his head off) falling, too. I looked ahead of me and I wished I didn't; I spied a dead end to the pipe. And, if the impact didn't kill me, I knew Shock and Barrel falling on top of me would make things worse. I waited for the moment of extreme pain, but when I got to the dead end, it opened and I went careening into the lair of Oogie Boogie.

Shock landed next to me in a few seconds. "It's Oogie's Lair…"  
It looked very different without the ultraviolet lights. It was dark and dingy, just like everything else in Halloweentown.  
"Where's Barrel?" I asked.  
We looked back up toward the tube and Barrel was stuck, his feet dangling out. We could make out that he was shouting, joyfully, "Let's go again! Let's go again!" from the inside.   
"Stay calm!" Shock screamed. "We'll get you out!" she turned to me. "Lock, let me stand on your soldiers.  
I was silent for a second. "What if you're too heavy?"  
"Are you calling me fat?"  
I just realized I totally said the wrong thing. "Oh, no, it's just that…"

So in about three seconds, I had a black eye and Shock was on my shoulders trying to reach Barrel.  
"I can't reach!" she called down. "Stand on your tiptoes."  
"I AM on my tiptoes!" I grunted.  
"My God, you're short." She muttered almost incoherently.  
"Jump!"   
She jumped, and before I knew it, Barrel was back with us.   
"Let's do that a—"  
Barrel was interrupted by the Mayor's distant voice. "Children? Are you down here?"  
"Shit!" Shock whispered. "We forgot about the Mayor!"  
"I have a plan." I said. Ideas were already formulating in my head.  
"No way," Shock said. "Last time we listened to you, you almost got us killed in a pipe slide! Leave everything to me!"


	19. Shock's Plan

Chapter XIX  
"Shock's Plan  
Or  
'The Torturing of Halloweentown's Literally Twofaced Political Figure'"

Shock led us behind one of the gigantic knickknacks the former Boogieman had lying around. The Mayor poked his head in the window that Sally had entered through when she came to save Sandy Claws. He scanned around for us as Shock picked up her slingshot and launched a pebble at the Mayor. This caught the rotund man off guard and he was sent falling into the lair. He landed on his back.  
"Oh, dear!" the Mayor moaned as he tried to get up. He was trapped on his back.  
We all walked towards him.  
"He's just like a turtle!" Barrel exclaimed. "He can't get up!"  
"Children," the Mayor pleaded. "Help me up!"  
"Don't you mean 'brats', you fat tub of shit?" Shock reminded of what the Mayor said before.   
The Mayor was silent.

Shock had us drag the Mayor by his arms over to a roulette wheel with a skeleton attached to it. She tore the skeleton off and she, with our help, strapped the Mayor on upside-down.  
"Why are you doing this!" the Mayor cried.   
"Because we don't want to get adopted, you hear?"  
Barrel and I pushed the crank connected to the wheel very hard and the Mayor, with the wheel, spun around like crazy.   
"WHOOOOOOOOAAAAAAA!" he screamed. When he finally stopped, he talked to Shock. "Look, Spock I—"  
"SHOCK!" she corrected him loudly. And she hit him with a stick she found on the ground with other debris. "And shut up! You only talk when I tell you to talk!"  
"But, Shock, I am only an elected official; I wasn't the one who decided you should be adopted!"  
"I SAID 'SHUT UP', PIG!" she hit him again.  
"Yeowch!"  
"Well, if you won't shut up, we'll just have to play a game with you…"   
The Mayor gulped.  
"Say, Barrel," the schemer said to her half-brother. "What does the Mayor kind of look like?"  
Barrel grinned and played along. "A pińnata!" he said.  
She turned to me and I nodded in agreement, though I couldn't help not keeping a straight face.  
"Interesting choice." She turned to the Mayor. "Is there candy inside you, swine?"  
"WHAT!" he blathered nervously.  
"You heard me." She said as she jabbed him in the stomach with the stick.  
"Well, hell, no!"  
She turned to Barrel and I again. "You wanna see if he's lying, guys?"  
Barrel picked up two sticks and gave one two me. "Yeahyeahyeahyeahyeahyeah!"  
We both ran over to him and all three of us started smacking him with the sticks.  
"Why are you doing this?" he managed to cough out.  
"Because," I explained. "We run the show!" All three of us giggled while Mayor screamed. "Help! Someone help me from these wretched children!"

In a few minutes, after playing some other "games" with the Mayor, we heard Jack's voice.  
"Mayor! Are you down here? You're taking an awfully long time and—oh my God!"  
Jack untied the Mayor, who was covered in bruises and scuffmarks.  
"What the hell," Jack scowled, "Do you think you're doing!"  
"We were just having some fun with the Mayor." Shock said in her cutest "innocent little girl" voice.   
"I'm sorry, guys. You're going to have to be adopted." Jack explained. "You guys are only about eight years old and we can't have you running around without a 'legal' guardian." 

Tears began to form in my eyes. It was like my life was beginning all over again. A guardian died and now I have to move on to another one. First I had a normal life, and then I ended up in the orphanage and then Halloweentown. I was sick of all this.  
"I'm sorry, guys." Jack repeated. "But, on the bright side, someone has vouched to take you in."  
"Who?" Shock asked with an attitude.


	20. Another New Home

Chapter XX  
"Another New Home"

Before we knew it, we were at an observatory up on a hill. A very old man in a wheelchair owned it. His skin was pale white, like his lab coat and he wore black gloves. He called himself Dr. Finklestein.  
"I've never had any children of my own." the Doctor said after he greeted us. "Well, except for Sally, but you really wouldn't call her a child, would you?"  
We all shook our heads.  
"I have an empty room just up the ramp. I'll get the cots for you in a little while. In the meantime, why don't you make yourself at home?"

We followed the directions the doctor gave us to a fairly decent sized, empty room with a small closet. Shock closed the door.  
"Well, this sucks," she complained. "Of all the people we could've been adopted by, it had to be this old coot!"  
"Old coots are the greatest, Shock!" Barrel said. "They're full of wisdom, and experience, and tons of stories about the old days when people thought the word 'dude' were a cuss!"  
"Hoo-rah." Shock said sarcastically, pretending to wave a little flag. "I can't wait for Dr. Idiot to tell us all about that."  
"It won't be all bad." I interrupted optimistically. "Sally will be here; she seems pretty nice."  
"I guess so."

Right as Shock finished Sally opened the door and strolled into the room.  
"Hi, guys." She said with a lovely grin.  
"Hi." We all replied back; Shock, with a retort.  
"I hope you guys will come to like it here," she said as she sat down on the floor next to us. "This definitely isn't the best place to end up." She caught Shock beginning to frown. "I mean, don't get me wrong; there's warm meals, the place is heated and you guys get your own room. But, let me just say that I'm happy to have you here with me.  
"We're happy to have you, too!" Barrel said with a quick smile.  
Sally smiled back. "Aw, thanks, Barrel." She said, patting him on the head as she got up and walked out. "See you guys at dinner." She shut the door.  
"She digs me." Barrel said with a content grin a few seconds after she left.  
"Yeah," Shock snapped with a cynical tone, "You're one of a kind, dipstick…"

Later on, a strange creature named Igor brought our cots up. We sat in silence on our own little beds for awhile until Barrel spoke softly.   
"I wanna go home."  
I looked at him. "We can't run away; we're adopted now."  
"No, home."  
I thought about what he said. "You mean our world?" I asked him in astonishment.   
He nodded.  
"I kinda miss it, too."  
"Guys," Shock whispered, speaking for the first time. "It's been over two months. Do you think they're looking for us?" I think she was crying.  
None of us said anything for a few minutes. "Think about it, guys; three kids vanishing into thin air without a trace—and on Halloween night, too."  
"Maybe we'll be in Ripley's Believe it or Not." Barrel said.  
At that moment, Sally came in the room holding two bowls of soup, one in each hand and Igor came in holding a third one. "Here you go, you guys." Sally said as she handed the bowl in her right hand to me and the bowl in her left to Shock. "Eat up, there's plenty more where that came from."  
Igor handed his bowl to Barrel and he passed out three spoons.  
"I made it myself." Sally announced proudly.  
Barrel slurped some of it. "It's delicious, Ms. Sally." He brownnosed.  
"Thanks, Barrel," she said. "Oh, by the way, this soup will help you sleep; so if you start to feel drowsy, now you know. She walked out and Igor followed her and closed the door behind him.

I slurped the soup up with the tiny wooden spoon that was given to me. "This stuff ain't half bad."   
"Really?" Shock asked. She slurped some of her soup and her eyes widened. "Wow, it is pretty good, Lock."  
Barrel threw the spoon away and slurped it down like a pig.  
Like Sally said, we started to feel drowsy after we finished the soup and we were asleep before we knew it.


	21. The Dream

Chapter XXI  
"The Dream"

I went tumbling through a void of darkness in my dreams I saw various images from my past floating around me and when they disappeared, I heard voices from my past as well. Some of them were mine, but some weren't.  
"Hahahahahahahahaha… 'Oh, where's Lock?' they'll say. 'I'm not sure, but, then again, who gives a shit? No one wants him around!' Hahahahahahahahaha…"  
"The Oogie Boogieman is the scariest monster of all! He is the one hiding under your bed; teeth ground sharp and eyes glowing red. Or he is the one hiding under your stairs; fingers like snakes and spiders in his hair. He is the 'who' when you call 'who's there?' and he is the wind blowing through your hair."  
"You're so stupid! Think now, if we blow him up to smithereens, we may lose some pieces and then Jack will beat us black and green!"  
"I am the Shadow on the Moon at night, filling your dreams to the brim with fright!"  
"We can't run away; we're adopted now."  
"I'm…JACK! THE PUMPKIN KING!"  
"The sound of rollin' dice, to me, is music in the air cuz I'm a gamblin' Boogieman although I don't play fair!"  
"Sally and Ja-ak, sitting in a tree! K-I-S-S-I-N-G! Ahahahahaha!"  
"Wait! I've got a better plan to catch this big red lobster man! Let's pop him in a boiling pot and when he's done, we'll butter him up!"  
Then I heard a quote I couldn't recall from anywhere. "The Book of the Wicked, Lock, use it…"

I woke up with a scream and I was perspiring. I was panting loudly. Shock and Barrel remained asleep. Barrel had kicked all his blankets off and was sprawled out across the small bed and Shock was under the covers and I couldn't even see her head. I wondered if anyone heard that.  
"The Book of the Wicked…" I thought to myself.  
That was very odd, indeed, considering I had no knowledge of this book. And, if someone was telling me to use it, I would have no idea where to find it. I went back to sleep soon enough.

Morning came quickly for me. Barrel was up first and Shock woke up after me. Igor had been ordered by Dr. Finklestein to make us waffles. The way Igor made them; they looked more like black squares and were harder than rocks.  
"These waffles suck…" Shock muttered under her breath as she poked the "waffle".  
"Igor," I called to him. "Do you mind taking us on a tour of this place?"  
"Igor will." The creature said. "What room do you want Igor to show you?"  
"All of them!" I said, "Every single one."  
Igor led us up the large ramp that winded up the inside of the building.  
"That Sally's room." He said as he pointed to the door. "Sally Master's daughter."  
"Why do you want a tour?" Shock whispered to me as we continued. "This place sucks noodles."  
"I'll tell you later…" I murmured back.  
"This Master's library." Igor said when we came to another door. "Master says Igor not allowed in here because he no want Igor to eat book pages…ooh, Igor starving…"  
"Well, Igor," I proposed, "How about you get a nice tasty Bone Biscuit and we'll explore the rest by ourselves?"  
"Yes, good!" Igor dashed to the Dr.'s room.

I turned to my friends quickly. "Okay, I had this really weird dream last night and I was hearing voices from the past few months. But one, of which, I can't recall, was telling me to use something called 'the Book of the Wicked'. Pretty weird, huh?"  
"Well," Shock retorted, "More along the lines of COMPLETELY INSANE! You actually believe what happens in your dreams? I thought you were smarter then that."  
Barrel interrupted. "Wait. Lock, who was this voice?"  
I put a finger to my chin and tried to remember. "It sounded a lot like Oogie."  
"But he's dead!" Shock said with a conceited grin. "That proves his dream wasn't real! Ha!"  
"Not exactly," Barrel replied, "It's very possible that the Oogie Boogieman was trying to contact you in your dreams."  
We took note of what Barrel was saying.  
"This happened to my aunt once. Onetime, she said my dead uncle came to her in a dream and said something bad was gonna happen and the next day, her daughter got in a car crash. Sure, her daughter survived, but now my aunt always listens to her dreams. Oogie Boogie obviously wants you to do something with the…what was it called, Lock?" "The Book of the Wicked." I responded.  
"Right. Oogie wants you to find this book so you can do something with it. The question is: 'what?' Hmm…"  
"First of all," I said, "I want to see if this book exists so I know my dreams aren't playing tricks on me."  
"It sounds like a good idea, at the least."


	22. The Book of the Wicked

Chapter XXII  
"The Book of the Wicked"

We pushed open the door to the library and it was nothing but books upon shelves upon walls of literature. The walls were pale green and it wad a fairly large room; about as big as the size of a normal backyard. Our footsteps echoed as we walked.  
"Where would it be?" Shock asked as she marveled upon all the books.  
"Beats me," I replied, "I don't even know what it looks like."  
Shock glared at me. "You're an idiot, Lock."  
So, out of impatience, we decided we would begin by throwing out books until we found it. After about twenty-five minutes later, the library's floor was almost covered in books. There were only five books left on the shelf I was working on. There was an enormously thick one with a black cover and a purple spine. I picked it up and looked at the cover and I dropped it in horror when I found what the title was.

"What's wrong?" Shock asked as she strolled over. She gasped when she saw the book. "Oh, my God…"  
I smiled vaguely. "Well, at least I know I'm not going crazy." I chuckled a little, but in turned into a far-off sigh.  
"I knew it!" Barrel bragged as he walked over to us. "Oogie wants us to do something with this book. The problem is, we don't know it yet."  
"We'd better hightail it back to our room." Shock suggested. "Before Dr. Finklestein catches what we did to the library."  
I was the first one out of the room, wanting to see what mysteries were held within the pages of this enigmatic book. Shock wanted to take a look at it first back in the bedroom.  
"Well, let's open it!" she egged.  
"Alright, alright!" I calmed her.

The cover was black and, written in a creepy typescript was "The Book of the Wicked." Under the words, there was a picture of a dark, golden-colored goblet with bubbling, pale-green liquid inside of it. We all looked at each other and opened it slowly. The pages were a yellowish-brown color, there was no doubt it had been around for at least one hundred years. There were diagrams of all sorts—usually depicting a demonstration of a magic spell. The paragraphs seemed to go on forever. The words were extremely complicated for kids our age to know.  
"This is bologna!" Shock yelled out after we flipped through most of the pages. "I don't even know what we're looking for! Do you? Lock? Barrel?"  
We didn't say anything.  
She flipped about a hundred pages back and pointed to a random spot on the page. "Now, if I say—" she looked at a sentence. "—'Akkem Akkel Ih Akkem Yenih Oh', you idiots expect something to happen?"  
We were still quiet.  
"WELL!"

An unnatural hush came over the room. The room itself began to glow pink. Shock turned around to face the book and supernatural black ooze began to seep out of it. We backed away from it and stood on top of my bed it fright and left the book on the floor. The goop wasn't very fast, but it engulfed everything. Barrel cleared his throat and turned to Shock, angrily. "Let me answer that a definite YES!"  
The ooze ate through Shock's bed and it sank into the depths. Barrel's was to suffer the same fate. We watched as the glop absorbed everything. Once it got level with the mattress, it leapt out at us and began constricting us, and at the same time, pulling us under. We were all screaming at the top of our lungs as we sank into the murky nadir of the dark abyss.

To my (and probably everyone else's) surprise, the darkness let us go after what seemed like ours. But we were not in our room. We were dropped into some sort of body of water. I coughed as I slogged myself up to shore. I stood up.   
"Shock!" I called. "Barrel! Where are you?"  
"Cool your jets Lock," I heard Shock's voice say.  
I turned to see Shock, followed by Barrel, emerge out of the lake. Shock wrung her wiry hair out; she also had the Book in her hand.  
"Where are we?" Barrel asked in utmost wonder.  
To tell the truth, I hadn't the slightest clue. It was extremely foggy and I could barely see anything.  
"Lock?" Barrel asked.  
I sighed as I began to walk into the thick vapor. "I…I don't know…" I looked up and a walked into something. "OUCH!"  
"What?" Shock said quickly.  
I rubbed my eyes and I looked up and I saw that I ran into a weeping willow tree. I knew where we were now.  
"Are you alright, Lock?" Shock asked me.  
"Happy Camper Orphanage…" I mumbled.  
"WHAT!" Shock shouted in disbelief. "How do you know?"  
"Well, here's a weeping willow tree and there's the lake. Where else could we be?"

We felt our way through the fog and it cleared up when we reached the top of the hill. We saw the orphanage and nothing had really changed. All three of us walked silently to the door and there was a poster there with our most recent school pictures on it reading "Have You Seen These Orphans?" It was like looking in a mirror to the past. Our faces had changed a lot. My face was pure white, now, and so was Barrel's. Shock's face was pale green. What we were looking at were three completely, semi-normal kids.  
"Déjŕr vu…" Barrel muttered quietly.  
"No kidding." I said, amazed.  
"They're actually looking for us?" Shock said in equal amazement. "That was unexpected."  
I turned to them. "Should we go tell them we're alive?" I asked my comrades.  
Shock shrugged vaguely. "I dunno. I feel kind of guilty that everyone's been so worried about us these past few months. Meanwhile, we're perfectly fine in some other crazy dimension…"  
"Well?"  
"I vote yes." Barrel said.  
"Me, too." I agreed.  
Shock gave a heavy sigh. "Me, three."  
We pushed open the familiar doors and no one was around. I remembered that it was about afternoon back at the Dr.'s, so everybody must be at lunch. We walked through the empty hallways, looking for sight of a teacher who stayed behind to do work, but we didn't find one.

We then split up to search all over the school. I heard Barrel call us after a few minutes. "Hey, guys! It's Kronenbitter!"  
Although I did hesitate, I ran to where I heard Barrel and Shock beat me there already. Kronenbitter was strolling out the main entrance with a stack of papers in his hand.  
We followed him out, calling his name, but he never answered. He just continued walking. We finally caught up to him when he dropped his stack of papers. Ironically, they were "Have you Seen These Orphans?" papers.  
I tried to tug on his sleeves to get his attention. "Mr. Kronenbitter, I—"  
Instead of the sleeve being grabbed, my hand phased straight through his arm. "HOLY CRAP!" I screamed and pulled away.  
"That was crazy!" Barrel shouted.  
"Hmm…" I pondered. "It seems that Kronenbitter can't make any sort of contact with us."  
"Like touching, hearing or seeing us." Shock listed on her fingers.

I looked at the Book of the Wicked. "It must be that thing!" I yelped as I pointed to it. "IT must've transported us here. Shock, you obviously said one of the spells to bring us here." I took the book from her and scanned the pages to find the spell she used. "Ah, here it is! 'Akkem Akkel Ih Akkem Yenih Oh' is the spell you used." I explained. "The description under it reads. 'Oh, ho, ho! To your beginning is where you'll go. But beware, for you see, for they will not notice ye.' That explains it."   
"Someone should've 'noticed' that that rhyme was kinda stupid." Barrel pointed out.  
"So how do we get back home?" Shock asked me.  
I flipped to the beginning of the book. "It says 'to disable the spell that you found was bleak, the magic words again, loudly, is what you should speak'. "You heard the book."  
We screamed it to the heavens. "AKKEM AKKEL IH AKKAM YENIH OH!"

The book opened abruptly and began to emit a large, pink vortex coming out of its pages. Before anyone could think, the vortex sucked us in quickly. In a matter of seconds, we were back in our room and everything was normal and no time seemed to have passed, either. I took the book and chucked it into the closet quickly and shut the door. Dr. Finklestein sure was mad when he found out what happened to his library. He made us clean it all up. Fortunately, he never noticed the Book of the Wicked was gone. We never opened the book again—until October 31st, 11:59 PM, that is…  



	23. Halloween Scares

Chapter XXIII  
"Halloween Scares"

Eight months went by extremely fast, even though every day was basically the same routine: Wake up, eat Igor's "rock waffles", take a shower (Shock usually wasted all the hot water), do chores for the doctor, eat lunch, more chores, eat dinner, take another shower, go to bed. It was more boring than the Mayor giving a lecture—which is VERY BORING, by the way. Though, we did go out to town and pull a small share of pranks, but at least it was something. So, like I said, October came extremely fast. Finally, I was beginning to grow taller and the three of us were becoming closer friends. Barrel and I would sometimes have a quarrel now and then (they were exceptionally rare for us to have); but we managed to work it all out. By late October, the new plans for Halloween were finally picking up, I've been looking forward to this celebration fro awhile and I was very anxious to see it. I offered to help out a few times, but the Mayor said he didn't trust me—and I really don't blame him for after what we did to him. The date today: October 31st.  
"I wonder what they'll do for Halloween this year." Barrel pondered when he and I were in our room one day.  
"Who knows?" I replied. "But it'll probably be pretty scary. You think you're brave enough to face it?"  
Barrel stood up and pounded his chest like a gorilla. "Are you kidding me, Lock? I was BORN ready."  
I laughed a little as Shock came through the door. "So, guys, what do you want to do today?"  
"Who cares?" Barrel asked. "We'll probably get in trouble if we do anything.  
"I can't believe it's already been a year since we came here." Shock said with a far-off sigh.  
"Wow…" I replied, thinking the same thing.   
"Well," Shock said clapping her hands together. "You wanna go Trick-or-Treating? We didn't get to last year."  
"I LOVE Trick-or-Treating!" Barrel shouted with glee.  
"I'm game." I said with a huge grin, nodding in agreement with Barrel.

That night, around six, we had gotten loads of candy and we headed out to the graveyard to count it.  
"I'll trade you," Shock offered her sibling. "One tootsie pop for your Hershey Bar."  
"Ooh, give it here!"  
They traded.  
I popped a piece of gum into my mouth. "I love Halloween!" As soon, as I said that a few gravestones exploded and we all jumped.  
"What the hell was that!" Shock shouted.  
"I dunno!" I replied.  
The dust from the ground kicked up and made a huge cloud and I heard Oogie's voice. "Ahahaha! The Book of the Wicked! The 84th Spell!" the cloud disappeared.  
"DID YOU GUYS HERE THAT!" I screamed in utter horror. "IT WAS OOGIE BOOGIE!"  
Barrel looked at me like I had four heads. "Dude, what are you talking about?"  
"DIDN'T YOU HEAR IT! HE'S TELLING ME TO USE THAT STUPID BOOK!"  
"What stupid book?" Shock asked.  
"THE BOOK OF THE WICKED, REMEMBER!" It had been many months since we looked at it.  
"Oh yeah," she recalled. "But I didn't hear anyone." I turned to Barrel.  
"Sorry, Lock, neither did I. It was just a huge cloud of dust. Sure, gravestones exploding is suspicious, but…"

I ran.  
"LOCK!" Shock called from behind me, "Where the heck are you going!"  
"To get the book!" I called back. "To prove that I'm not going insane here!" I dug through the closet back in our room and found that evil book (it had gathered an awful lot of dust) and I ran back to the cemetery and found my cohorts. "Okay…the 84th spell…" I flipped through the pages and counted the number of spells until I got to eighty–four.  
"What are you doing?" Barrel and Shock would ask me, but I ignored them.   
I came upon the 84th spell and it read "The Contact Ritual." "I'll prove to you that I'm not going crazy!" I screamed the magic words at the top of my lungs. "Tcatnoc!"

In a second, the book erupted with a red type of matter and the red stuff began hovering in the air. A shadowy figure appeared in the middle. It was Oogie Boogie.  
"Well, it's about time, children." He said, not coming out of the mysterious cloud.  
"Oh, great…" Shock moaned. "THAT guy!" she turned to me. "Why couldn't you have called Orlando Bloom instead!"  
"SILENCE!" Oogie shouted.  
"Where are you?" Barrel asked quickly.  
"WHERE DO YOU THINK I AM?1 I'M IN LIMBO!"  
"Oh…"  
"I have a job for the three of you," the burlap creature said. "Jack Skellington was the reason of my ultimate demise so…"  
"You want us to kill him!" I interrupted. "Because we don't kill."   
"NO, you babbling nitwits!" Oogie screamed. "I'M going to kill him."  
"How are you gonna do that?" Shock asked, confused. "You're dead."  
"That's why I need your help." Oogie said. "I want you to bring me back to life using one of the spells in the book. And I will kill Jack," He smiled so wide, we could hear his fabric stretch, "Personally."  
"What's in it for us?" Shock asked in her demanding nature.  
"You will get away with whatever you want." Oogie replied. "You wanna pull a prank, you go ahead and pull it! You will never get in trouble. When Oogie Boogie is the King, you'll get away with EVERYTHING!"   
"Sounds good." She turned to Barrel and me. "Whaddaya say? It sounds like a good deal to me."  
I stepped up. "Fine, Oogie, we'll play your game."  
"Wonderful." He chuckled. "Just don't do it when Jack's around! You'll get caught and I'll never live again!" The cloud disappeared, with Oogie. 

"So…" I teased them both as we strolled back to Dr. Finklestein's place. "There are some words I'd like to hear. Please tell me what they are, Shock."  
Shock sighed and began muttering under her breath.  
"I can't hear you!"  
She muttered louder, but still indistinctly.  
"What?"  
"YOU'RE NOT GOING INSANE, OKAY! IS THAT WHAT YOU WANNA HEAR!" I smiled smugly. "Yes."  
We threw our candy in our rooms, along with the book and we were going to tell the doctor that we were back. We opened the door and Jack was in there talking to the doctor.   
"Doctor, please look after things while I'm away."  
We needed to hear no more. We rushed outside and giggled to ourselves.   
"Jack's leaving town!" I exclaimed  
"Now we can bring back Oogie!" Shock said.  
"Yeah," Barrel agreed. "How hard could it be?"  
We giggled and ran off to get the Book of the Wicked.


	24. Bugs, Bags, and All Oogie is Back!

Chapter XXIV  
"Bugs, Bags, and All! Oogie is Back!"

We did some more Trick-or-Treating to have a little bit more fun before Oogie's return. It was about 11:50 PM when we began scurrying to the Treehouse, which was extremely moldy because of our absence for months. Barrel thought the best place to resurrect Oogie Boogie would be in that twisted casino/torture chamber of his. Since we didn't really no how else to get down there quickly, we slid down the dusty old Bug Pipe and landed on the yellow structure Sandy Claws did almost a year ago.  
Shock opened the book slowly and looked for some sort of resurrection spell. "Ah, here it is!" she exclaimed when she found the incantation. She began reading it aloud. "Gnirb Ruo Eigoo Kcab Ot Efil Os Eh Nac Llif Eht Dlrow Htiw Efirts!" 

Everything was silent. Nothing happened for a moment. It seemed like the whole world had stopped. Then, the Book exploded into flames as a shadowy figure rose out from the inferno. The three of us backed up slowly. In a moment, the flames disappeared and the evil book was gone and Oogie Boogie was standing in its ashes. He said nothing at first and just started laughing loudly.  
"Oogie Boogie is back," Oogie screamed joyfully, "And here to stay! Ahahahahaha!" He turned to us. "And I have you children to thank."  
We were all cowering in fear. Honestly, I don't think any of us thought the spell would even work.  
Barrel spoke up. "Your welcome." He chirped very quickly.  
"I have big plans for this town." The gambling Boogieman chortled. "And YOU'RE going to help me."  
We didn't dare argue with the monster. 

"Now, where is the one called Jack Skellington?"  
"He went out of town." I answered.  
Oogie grinned. "Ooh, this'll work out nicely." He stopped for a second. "Wait! How long?"   
"I'm not sure." I replied. "It may be long because he asked Dr. Finklestein to watch after things while he's away."   
"Good…Now, where are you children living these days?"  
"The Doctor's." Barrel said.  
"Very good…now," Oogie held up his "hand" and a lumpy, green rock with piercing red eyes appeared in it.  
"What's that?" Shock asked rhetorically, "A tennis ball?"  
"No, idiot," Oogie replied.

"It's a fake brain to put Dr. Finkypants…or whatever his name is…under my control. And if HE'S the one looking after the town, well, you get the picture. Ahahahahaha! And that's you're job; switch his brains while he isn't looking so I can swindle the town to make monsters and booby-traps for ME! A.K.A.: Jack's gonna be in for a HUGE surprise! Ahahahahaha! Operation: 'Oogie's Revenge' is going right as planned!"

His evil laugh haunted the night as he began thinking of more dastardly plans. As he guffawed louder, and louder, Shock, Barrel, and I wondered if we made the right choice to bring him back.


	25. Mind Games

Chapter XXV  
"Mind Games"

I carried the artificial brain behind me to keep it from staring from me. We tiptoed silently down the dark streets of the gothic nightmare, Halloween Town, occasionally stepping in a puddle.  
"We better be quiet if we don't want Finklestein to catch us out this late." Shock reminded us as we drew nearer to the observatory. "He probably thinks we're in our room sorting our candy, or something."  
"Well," Barrel interrupted. "You're forgetting about—"  
We slid out of an alley and into view where the Finklestein home. And Sally was standing in the doorway (This is where Barrel's sentence was cut off)!  
"—Sally."

"WHERE IN THE WORLD WERE YOU?!?!" the rag doll screamed.  
We didn't say anything.  
"THE DOCTOR AND I WERE WORRIED SICK!"  
Finklestein was behind her, scowling at us.  
"What're you gonna do to us?" Shock asked as innocently as she could.  
Sally sighed. "I…I dunno…" she breathed. "We'll talk about it tomorrow. Just go to bed…"   
We scrambled up to our room faster than you could say "we're screwed". Luckily I had hidden the creepy brain behind my back, avoiding Dr. Finklestein's or his "daughter's" gaze.  
"MAN!" Barrel said in relief the second we shut the door. "That was close!!"  
"You're tellin' me!" I said, exasperated.  
No one said anything for a few minutes.  
I heard commotion downstairs. I pushed the door open ever so quietly. In my sight were Finklestein and Sally. They both went in their rooms.  
"What do we do now?" Shock asked me when I shut the door.  
I turned and smiled at her. "We do nothing." I replied. "We just wait for Finklestein to fall asleep and then we move in."

So, we sat in silence in the dark for forty minutes. "Okay, let's go." I finally said.  
We scampered down the ramp to Finklestein's room. Barrel opened the door without it even making a creak and we snuck into action. With the brain in hand, I tiptoed up to the old doc's bed and was about to open the hatch on his head, when I slipped on the sheet that was on the floor and I landed with a clunk.  
"HUH?! Wha?!" the doctor was awake.  
"Shit!" I heard Shock mutter.   
In the meantime, Barrel had disappeared from sight, along with the brain.  
"What the heck are you children doing here?" he growled.  
I peaked behind the disgruntled doctor to see Barrel on the bed, silently opening the hatch.  
The last thing we heard Finklestein say before the switch was "where's that other kid, sleepi—"


	26. Jack's Return

Chapter XXVI  
"Jack's Return"

The mission was a success and no one suspected a thing. Barrel was in charge of waking us at 5:00 AM before anyone woke up so that we could report to Oogie. We told him the mission was a success and he was filled with glee. Before we knew it, Oogie's plan was unfolding perfectly right in front of our eyes. Finklestein had deceived the town into making traps and whatnot. About a month after the mind switch, Oogie came out of hiding and overthrew the Mayor and took over Halloweentown. We were moved from hated pranksters to hated commissars around the town; bringing the people that didn't work to Oogie Boogie and leaving him to do away with them. Oogie had also given us powers to control the monsters he had the town create. We could call on them to do our bidding whenever we wanted to. To this day, we still have no idea how he did it. Oogie told us if that Jack EVER returned, we would drive him out of town, no matter what the costs. Everything changed on December 24th. We had found the walking bathtub inside the musty old Treehouse and were frolicking within it as in carried us through the cemetery in the crisp and chilly mid afternoon. We were devising a new song to the tune of the old one. Something with a "Hail to Oogie Boogie" theme to it.  
"Okay," Shock suggested. "How about 'first we brought the master back to…uh…"  
"…'Take this town away from Jack." I finished.  
"Ooh, that's a good one!"  
Barrel, in the meantime, was silent. He was probably thinking up a verse of his own.  
I was stabbing the air with my "plunger weapon" as we began to try out the song. We crashed through the gate of the Old Graveyard and we gasped when we saw Jack Skellington walking around.

He noticed us. "I might've known." Jack said.  
"Welcome home, Jack." I said, pretending to have been expecting him.  
"How was your trip, Jack?" Shock asked.  
"Are you having fun, Jack?" Barrel asked, referring to Oogie's creatures running around Halloweentown.  
"You three wouldn't have anything to do with OOGIE'S RETURN, would you?!"   
"Who?" I asked innocently.  
"Us?" Shock repeated in the same tone.  
"Uh…well…uh…" Barrel mumbled.  
"It's not too late." Jack informed us. "Return Halloweentown back to normal."  
"But why would we do that?" I asked with a grin.   
"The fun has just begun!" Shock added.  
"And besides, we're on a secret mission to stop you!" Barrel said with a chuckle. "Don't tell anyone though!"  
I conked him with my plunger. "You weren't supposed to tell him." I turned to Shock and whispered in her ear. "I'll take care of Jack,"  
"Gotcha!" 

I hopped out of the tub and flipped my mask on as the tub walked away.  
"See ya later!" Shock called back to me.  
"Now you'll have to play with me!!" I said with a devilish grin. I waved my toilet plunger and brown colored skeletons came up from the ground, glaring ferociously at Jack. "Let's see you beat all of these guys, Jack!!" I mocked.  
"Watch me!" the Pumpkin King shouted back. He waved his arm and a green, slimy thing connected to it came alive.  
"Uh, what's that?"  
"It's my Soul Robber," Jack explained. "And it's gonna rock your world!!"   
In a about 35 seconds, Jack had wiped out all the creatures I conjured up.  
"GET HIM!" I yelled to monsters that had been destroyed. "Huh?" I flipped my mask up in confusion and saw they were gone. "Hey, where'd they all go?"  
Jack walked over to me with a scowl. "Lock…"  
I thought something up. "I'll be good from now on! I promise."  
"You'd better be…"   
Jack strolled away, unaware that my fingers were crossed. 

"Yes," Oogie sighed when we told him Jack was back. "I already know that the Pumpkin King has returned. He has already defeated me once; but it was 'beginner's luck' if you ask me."   
"What do we do now, sir?" Barrel asked.  
Oogie was silent for a minute—perhaps he didn't expect Jack to return so soon; he didn't have a plan. "Sally." He finally uttered. "My creatures trapped her in the catacombs. Jack is bound to go there next."  
"What do you want us to do?" Shock asked.  
"Easy; stop Jack from getting there. We don't want him finding out that his girlfriend is being hidden under ground, now do we?"


	27. Jack and Sally

Chapter XXVII  
"Jack and Sally"

I was sent to stop Jack from getting to Sally in the catacombs, if he found out, that is. And I was asked to go alone. I felt like a big-shot walking through the cemetery, humming a heroic tune. I was using my plunger, having a fake swordfight with an imaginary enemy. I sat on a fairly large tombstone and gazed up at the yellow-brown sky. I began daydreaming and remembered how we used the Book of the Wicked to find out what everyone was up to back on good old planet Earth. They had posters up with our faces on it. I wondered if they were still looking for us. My head was dragged down from the clouds by footsteps. Like I expected, they were Jack's. He looked like he was in a hurry  
I jumped out from behind the tombstone and blocked his path. "Why do you always have to ruin our fun?"

"Lock, stand aside," the skeleton ordered. "I don't have time to play your little games."  
My anger was building. "You know what, Jack? I'm a VIP now so YOU'RE gonna take orders from ME!" He was just like those kids back at school, thinking I was nothing. I wanted to make him pay.  
Jack looked at me like I had five heads.  
"I'll fight you, Jack, to prove I'm stronger than you."  
Jack hesitated for a moment.  
"Come on."  
The Pumpkin King gave a sigh and put his Soul Robber into attack mode.

I charged toward him at a speed I didn't even know I could reach and I smashed my plunger into Jack. I hit him, but he was just to quick, his Soul Robber grabbed my plunger, with me still clutching it and it flung my weapon and I about 30 feet. I hit the ground hard with my back.  
"Are you okay, Lock?" Jack called, sounding worried.  
I sat up and brushed the dust off me. "I'm fine!" I called back. I began racing towards him again and he JUMPED OVER me (!) and a slammed my face into a tombstone. My hair was messed up and I felt my nose bleeding. Not to mention that my head was pounding.  
"I'm sorry, Lock," Jack said sincerely as he walked up to me and help you up. "I really just can't fight a child."  
"I'll get you next time!" I vowed as I wiped the small amount of blood off my face.  
Jack sighed. "There won't be a next time, Lock." He began to walk towards the direction of the catacombs.

"Damn…" I said to myself. "I need to be more diligent." I hopped over the stone walls as fast as I could, my heart pounding in my chest—wanting to get there first. I ran fast through the Corridor of Coffins and opened the door to where Sally was being held and I gasped in horror when I saw that Jack was in the empty room hugging his one true love. Oogie told me that there was one thing left I could try if Jack ever made it. But he didn't mention what. I peered up towards the ceiling and a HUMONGOUS spider slept soundly there. This is what Oogie was talking about. I picked up a stone on the ground and tossed as high as I could. Luckily, it hit the spider's abdomen and it began to stir. I closed the door and listened. I timed the spider's screech, Sally's scream almost perfectly. I ran back to the Treehouse as fast as I could. As I expected, Shock, Barrel, and Oogie Boogie were waiting for me.  
"What happened to you?" Barrel said.  
"You look like a wreck." Shock added.  
"What are you, my mother?" I grunted in a bad mood because of Jack defeating me.  
"Was the mission a success, child?" the Boogieman asked.   
"Jack's as good as dead, sir." I informed him.   
"Excellent…no…not excellent…"  
"What?"  
"Jack killed what I had in store for him…"  
"Where does that leave us?" Shock asked.  
"Good question."


	28. Shock's Turn

Chapter XXVIII  
"Shock's Turn"

Oogie assigned Shock to get rid of Jack next. I had faith in the fact that she'd be the one because she's a little more "ferocious" than Barrel and me. We walked through Town Square and we saw Jack coming from Finklestein's place.  
"Hide!" Barrel said.  
We ran toward the direction of the Witches' Shop and hid behind the wall. To Shock's liking, Jack walked into the area and she waved her broom and the area was sealed of by bars that trapped Jack.

Shock hopped out from behind the wall. "Hey Jack!"  
He looked.  
"I don't think you'll find me as forgiving as Lock."  
I tried to sound tough. "I let you win before!" I yelled out.  
"Quiet, you!" Barrel shushed, knowing I didn't.  
"Time for some help!" Shock waved her broom and pale, white ghosts came oozing out of the walls. "Get him!"  
Jack grunted and got his Soul Robber into attack mode.  
"Go, Shock!" Barrel cheered as Jack began to fight the evasive ghosts.  
I began singing the song we made up into the cemetery. "Hail to Mister Oogie, Jack will never win! When you find our booby traps, they will do you in!"  
Shock smiled and sang along. "First, we brought the master back to take this town away from Jack. We knew he'd fight to set things right so we got bad guys who ATTACK!"  
Barrel caught on. "Ghosts and skeletons galore! Brainwashed spiders wanting more! They're rising up from every tomb to torment Jack and seal his doom!"

Jack glared at us, as he fought, but we continued to blurt out our twisted little song.  
"Hail to Mr. Oogie, put Jack to the test! Keep him guessing all the time, never let him rest!"  
I took a part from our last song. "Then Mister Oogie Boogieman…"  
Shock continued. "Can take the whole thing over then!"  
"He'll be so pleased, I do declare! The whole world should beware!"   
"Wheeeee!"  
"You kids are in HUGE trouble!" Jack shouted.  
"With Mr. Oogie as our king," I sang. "We'll get away with EVERYTHING! No more scolding for our pranks; the new king Oogie: Let's give thanks!"  
Barrel stayed on the subject of pranks. "A prank a day; oh, why stop there? We'll do whatever; we don't care! Then everyone will come to know we run the show. Hey life's unfair."  
A ball of fire engulfed Jack and Barrel and I ducked behind the wall to avoid it.  
"Hey, where'd they all go?" we heard Shock ask herself. There was a second or so of silence. "Time to scram!" Shock hopped over the wall and grabbed both of us by our arms. "Let's get outta here!"

"What happened?" Barrel asked as she dragged us around.  
"I dunno…" she panted as we finally stopped. "He turned into this scarecrow thingy and started breathing fire and—and—and—and—"  
"Slow down, Shock," I said. "He was breathing fire?!"  
"Yeah, you believe me, right?"  
"I guess so. So what now?" "Shock's clock isn't cleaned yet," Barrel informed me. "Right, Shock?"   
"Yup." Shock said with a devious smile. "You guys stay here. I'm gonna go to the Doctor's; Jack's bound to head there next." Shock walked away and left us.

"Whaddaya think she's gonna do?" I asked Barrel.  
"You never know with her." He explained, staring up and the orangey-black sky. "One time, to get revenge on a classmate for dropping a book on her foot, she trained our pet hamster, Scruffy, to sic the kid. Talk about random."   
"You said it. But a book on her foot? That was nothing major."   
"Did I mention it was a math book?"  
"Ouch…" I said, just thinking about it. My mind began to wander, as minds often do, and I pondered about the fact that if it wasn't for these guys, I wouldn't be here. I would still be being bullied and teased back at Happy Camper Orphanage. I owed these guys. "Barrel."  
"Yeah?"   
"Thanks."  
"For what?"  
"For sticking with me. I'm glad God chose me to be your friend."  
"Aw, no problem, buddy." He replied. "That's what friends are for."

I about 20 minutes, Shock came back with an angry look.  
"What happened?" I asked.  
"Jus shut up!" she snapped. "I'm just so pissed off that he beat me again!!"  
"Well, Shock," Barrel said, trying to cheer her up. "You remember what Grandpa always said: 'it's better to be pissed off than pissed on!' Remember?"  
"Shut up!" Shock repeated.  
I laughed at the joke.  
"There's no time for laughing;" she said. "We got to report back to Oogie and if I'm pissed off, there's no telling how pissed off HE'S gonna be when we tell him."  
The walk to the Treehouse was tedious and slow. We tried to delay our deserved punishment from Oogie as long as possible. When we finally got there, he awaited happily for our report.

"How'd it go? Don't leave out ANY details!" he said with a giggle.  
We were silent.  
His face flashed from happy to scornful in an instant. "How dare you little abominations fail me twice? I CAN get better henchmen than you, ya know!"  
"We're sorry, Oogie." Barrel said with a "cute face."  
"Leave my sight." The Boogieman sneered with a disdainful glare.  
We began to climb out the door, but Oogie called us back. "Wait,"  
"Yeah?"  
"I think I may have a few more jobs for you to pull to earn back my trust." 


	29. A Moody Mayor & Peril in thePumkin Patch

Chapter XXIX  
"A Moody Mayor and Peril in the Pumpkin Patch"

Oogie had assigned us to capture the Mayor and imprisoned. He conjured us up a cage and we dragged it to the Mayor's house.  
"How about we hang it on that flagpole up there?" Barrel exclaimed, pointing to a flagpole, way up high, jutting out of the house.  
"I don't think the pole's thick enough to support the weight!" I joked. 

Shock kicked open the door. "Alright, blubber butt, come on out!!"  
Silence.  
"Maybe he's hiding, Shock?" I suggested.  
"And maybe YOU'RE being too loud." She said. "So shut up."  
The Mayor's hearse was parked in the middle on the large foyer between two staircases.  
"What do we do now, Shock?" I asked.  
The witch costumed girl turned to me and Barrel and gave us a wink and a smirk. "Well, I guess he's not here!" Shock said untruthfully but convincingly. We'd better go look around Town Square."

Barrel and I caught on and we both walked to the door with Shock making sure the Mayor—wherever he was—could hear our footsteps. Shock opened the door, waited a few seconds, and closed it.  
The Mayor hopped out of the trunk (the place where you put the coffin) of the hearse. "Phew…" he sighed in relief with that Southern baritone voice of his. "Those troublemakers are finally gone." The two faced political figure wiped the sweat off his brow.  
"Hi, Mayor!" Barrel blurted out with a mocking tone of voice.  
Mayor turned immediately and screamed like a little girl when he saw us. "B-but you l-left!"  
"Face it, Mayor," I said, rolling my eyes. "It's not too hard to fool you."  
"Now get in the cage before I beat you to a pulp!" Shock demanded with a menacing scowl.  
"Please!" the Mayor pleaded. "Don't do this!"  
"It's a little too late for that!" Shock giggled. 

The Mayor dove into his hearse again and tried to yell something through the PA system so someone could come and help him, but Barrel tackled him and they both tumbled out the opposite side. With both of them rolling around on the floor, Barrel began shouting:   
"Do it! Get the cage."  
I grabbed the cage and ran around to the other side of the hearse where the Mayor was trying to fling Barrel off him. "What do I do now?" I said as I watched to two squirming on the floor.  
"Throw it on top of them, idiot!" Shock called from behind. "But make sure the open part lands on the Mayor!"  
"What about Barrel?" I asked unsurely.  
"Don't worry about it. Barrel knows what he's doing!"  
I made sure I was close to them. "Here goes nothing. One…two…THREE!" I tossed the somewhat heavy cage over my head. Barrel looked up and saw it coming for him. He leaped away, leaving the Mayor still on the ground. The last word we heard from the Mayor before he got trapped was "Wha?!" We propped up the cage and locked him inside. "Someone please help!" he cried. "I'm only an elected official here; I can't escape from traps by myself!"  
"Cry me a river, drama queen." Shock murmured as we began dragging the cage with him up the stairs.

To make a long story short, we hung the cage on the flag pole Barrel acknowledged before. The Mayor kept screaming for help, but we were so up high, we—including himself—didn't think anyone would hear him. We climbed down the Mayor's house, giggling all the while.  
"Oogie's gonna be so psyched when he hears about our success!" I said with glee as we wandered into Town Square from Hemlock Homestead. Barrel locked the gate with a key Oogie gave him.  
"I know!" Barrel agreed. "Maybe he'll reward us by making us the rulers of Christmastown!"   
Oogie's next assignment was a secret so far. He told us that after we finished business at the Mayor's house, to wait in the Pumpkin Patch.  
"What do you think he wants us to do?" Shock asked me.  
"I wonder if he's gonna meet us here." I responded.  
Soon enough, the PA system from the Town Hall began to blare. We all had to be quiet to hear what Oogie had to say.

"My dearly abhorred denizens of Oogie Town," he began, "Jack has returned…according to the reports…heh, heh, heh…and he's enjoying our dangerous Halloween so much, that he's SCREAMING in horror! Ahahahahaha! REJOICE! This is all thanks to your efforts!" The Gamblin' Boogieman paused for a second. "Barrel; my star pupil, my prodigal son,"  
Barrel jumped at the sound of his name.  
"Be a good boy and finish the work your HALF-wit, HALF-alive playmates—"  
Shock and I glared toward where the voice was coming from.  
"—could not! Or there's more than HALF a chance I'll be very…very…ANGRY!!!!!!" The speaker turned off.  
We turned to Barrel and his eyes were wide with fear. "Then I guess I better not fail then, huh?"  
"I'm confused," I said. "He didn't tell us to do anything; he just said 'finish the work blah, blah, blah…' and not anything else."  
"Maybe he's leaving Barrel to decide." Shock said. "Which, in my opinion, is NOT a very good idea."  
"Quit your worrying," Barrel said calmly, taking his favorite lollypop out of his pocket and began to lick it. "Every time I take a lick of my lolly, I think straight." He explained.  
"You actually carry that thing around?" Shock asked in disgust.  
"Yeah." Barrel replied as he took another lick. "So what?"

Before Shock could answer, we hear footsteps coming from behind the giant vine we were resting on. We hopped up on the vine to confront the person. It was Jack.  
"Hey, Jack," Barrel said, waving his lollypop at Jack, "Want some candy?"  
"No thanks." Jack said with a scowl. "I've had enough of your tricks."  
"Too bad." I said.  
"The biggest trick is yet to come!" Shock said with a grin.  
"And besides, after what we did at the Mayor's house I—" Barrel realized what he had just said. "Oops, I wasn't supposed to tell you that." We hopped behind the vine. "Catch ya later, Jack!"  
"You dumbbell!" Shock said as we ran. "You just blurted out our entire plan to Skeleton Jack!"  
"Don't you worry about your ugly, little head, Shock." Barrel said calmly. "Once again, my lolly has saved us all!"  
"So?" I said.   
"You two just run along back to the Treehouse and I'll take care of everything…"


	30. Rooftop Rumble

Chapter XXX  
"Rooftop Rumble"

Shock and I did as Barrel told him and went back to the Treehouse. We didn't tell Oogie what was going on because he might disapprove of Barrel's plan. We just took the cage lift to the upper part of the Treehouse. Shock ran to another part of our fort, not even saying a word. I began to follow her and I finally found her sitting on the highest point of the whole house.  
I made my way up there. "What are you doing all the way up here?"  
"It's nice out." She replied simply.  
"Are you worried about Barrel?"  
"Not really." Shock said, staring out at the humongous Halloweentown moon. "He's matured quite a bit ever since we came here."  
"Huh?" Honestly, I didn't notice.  
"Remember how he was all jittery when we first came to that stupid orphanage/boarding school?"  
I thought back and I recalled that he stuttered a lot. And, now that I thought about it, he had become much more independent and less needing of us. "By now, Barrel's probably driving the Pumpkin King straight out of Halloweentown."  
Shock gave me a little smile, but not turning away from the moon. "I'm glad you have so much confidence in him."  
"Well, he's my friend," I replied. "I'm supposed to support him. Have you ever heard of the 'What goes around comes around' expression? Well, everything comes back to you. For example, 'support a friend, and they'll support you'. Y'know?"

She didn't answer, but asked a question. "What we're doing…"  
"Yes?"  
"Is it…right?"  
"Right?"   
"Yes," she said. "Right."  
I really didn't think Shock, of all people, would care whether something was moral or not. She really only acted this way when Barrel wasn't around. Was she really just a sweet little girl, lamenting in her soul instead of the mean bully Barrel and I always hung around with? Perhaps she felt she could only reveal these feelings in front of me instead of Barrel, her own brother?  
"Lock?"  
I sighed deeply and didn't answer for awhile. "I…I don't know." I muttered finally. I thought about all the things we'd done over the time we've been here. We played an almost lethal prank on the Mayor, kidnapped Sandy Claws, disobeyed Jack's direct order NOT to bring Sandy to Oogie, resurrected Oogie Boogie, helped him with his schemes and now we were getting rid of Skeleton Jack. I always try to balance out the bad things I've done with the good things I've done. So, the good things I've done are that I've stuck with Barrel and Shock…and that's about it.  
Behind us, I heard footsteps. Shock and I whirled around in fear because we didn't expect anybody. It was Barrel. He stopped right next to us, sweating and panting (probably from running all the way here from the Pumpkin Patch).  
"Don't tell me you failed, idiot!" Shock screeched at him.  
"I did." Barrel said, catching his breath. "But I have another plan; we just have to okay it with Oogie."  
This, unfortunately, like many things, is easier said than done. Having Oogie Boogie to agree with something is like getting an infant to say "Pietrisycamollaviadelrechiotemexity (And, yup, that's a real word)."  
"Well, well, well? What have we here?" Oogie said when we entered his lair.  
"Mr. Boogie?" Barrel said with fear in his voice. "We need a huge favor."  
Oogie grumbled. "What?" he replied in disbelief.  
"We need you to booby-trap the Mayor's roof!"  
"Why, may I ask?"  
"It's to finish off Jack Skellington." Barrel said. "Once and for all." He added quickly.  
I had to hand it to Barrel. He had a HUGE amount of courage to stand up to Oogie Boogie.  
"What is it that you want?" Oogie said, obviously persuaded by Barrel.  
"Jack obviously wants to go rescue the Mayor and we're going to try and stop him."  
There was a long pause. "Consider it done." The Gamblin' Boogieman said finally.  
I spoke up. "But how did you—"  
He stopped me. "Ask no questions." Oogie said quickly. "Now go, children. And do NOT disappoint me again." 

Before I knew it, we were in our bathtub and heading towards the Mayor's house.  
"That was easier than I thought." I said.  
"MUCH easier than getting an infant to say 'Pietrisycamollaviadelrechiotemexity'." Barrel pointed out. "Did you guys know that's a real word?"  
I luahged. "I believe it means 'The state of not having the faintest idea what is going on'."  
"You guys are both nitwits." Said Shock. She would normally said that when she didn't want to hear anymore of a conversation.  
"Jack's gonna be so surprised when he sees we beat him there!" I said with glee.  
"Yeah, he'll be all like—" Barrel made a face of Jack being surprised and we both laughed.  
Soon enough, we were at the Mayor's house, walking up the deck that wrapped around the whole house. We passed by the Mayor, who was still in cage and whimpering.  
"Stay back!" he said.   
"Gladly." said Shock. And we continued on.  
We made it up to the roof and we looked around for what Oogie might've done to help us. Though, it seemed nothing was there. We searched the roof for about ten minutes and we found a small circular botton (about as big as one of our hands) on the ground with a spider carved into it.   
"Is that it?" I asked, puzzled.  
"It has to be." Said Barrel. "It's the only thing that's doesn't seem to be here. Why else would the Mayor have a button on the roof?"  
"That's true." Shock agreed.  
"Jack should be here any minute." I said as we hopped back into the tub.

Sure enough, Jack entered the rooftop on cue and glared at us. "Well, well, well. If it isn't the three little pranksters again? You aren't still working for Oogie, are you?"  
"We're not working;" I argued, "We're playing!"  
"And winning!" Shock shouted.   
"Up for another round, Jack?" Barrel said.  
"AS IF YOU HAD A CHOICE!" we all shouted.  
Jack shook his head. "It's time you kids learned that all games must come to an end. Especially THIS ONE!" "Bring it on, Bone Daddy!" I shouted.  
"If you insist." Jack forced that Soul Robber of his into attack mode and kept his eye (socket) on us.  
"Giddyup!" Barrel said and the bathetub started to run around the rooftop, avoiding the attacks Jack was launching at us.  
It was like we were in a rodeo; the tub was bucking this way and that while Shock and I held on tight so we wouldn't fall out (Barrel had his hands in the air and was laughing). Unfortunately, Jack got a clear shot. The green, gooey Soul Robber launched out at us and hit our tub right in the center. To our horror, we heard a loud cracking noice and the bathtub had split in half and we were all sent soaring across the roof.  
"Shit!" I heard Barrel yelp.  
"Are you ready to give up?" he said with a small grin.  
"We're just getting started!" I called back as I picked myself up off the ground.

I turned to the others and Barrel was smiling. I waited for him to put his plan in motion. "Hail to Mr. Oogie! Put Jack to the test!" he shouted. He looked at us  
Shock and I knew what he was doing; he was singing to try to distract Jack from his (and our) attacks. Shock was right; he DID change.  
"Keep him guessing all the time," Shock shouted. "Never let him rest!"  
"Now that Oogie is the king," I sang giddily, "we'll get away with everything! No more scolding for our pranks; the new king Oogie, let's give thanks!"  
Jack apparently expected our antics (it WAS what we did last time) and began to sing along with us. "Don't be foolish; think now, all this danger isn't fun and games! When this town is back to normal, do you really WANT THE BLAME?!"

Barrel took out his slingshot and began to shoot small stones that he pobably found on the way back home from the Pumpkin Patch. "Take that!!" he shouted. "And that, and that, and that, andthatandthatandthatandthatandthatandthatandthatandthat!!!!!"   
Jack dodged them rather gracefully.  
"Then Mr. Oogie Boogieman…" I said.  
"Can take the whole town over then!" Shock continued.  
Barrel took us home. "He'll be so pleased, I do declare, the whole world should beware! Wheeee!"  
Barrel's plan was anything but foolproof; Jack seemed totally focused on defeating us. "Get ready…" he said. "You kids are in big, big trouble!" In a flash, Jack's Soul Robber changed shape so the end of it looked like a medieval flail. It slammed itself into the ground and the vibration made us all fall over. We couldn't get up, we were so dizzy.  
"It's high time someone tought you kids a lesson." Jack said walking toward us.  
We backed up.  
"Who's first?"  
"Hey Jack!" I shouted.  
"Trick-or-Treat!" Barrel and Shock yellped. We got to our feet as quick as we could and we all pressed the button at the same time, wondering what would happen.  
Before we knew it, a huge gaping black hole appeared in the Mayor's roof. Jack fell through it, screaming, and it closed up again as if nothing had happened.  
"Looks like he really FELL for that one!" Shock laughed. "Get it, guys? 'Fell?'"  
We all giggled.  
"What now?" I asked.  
"Yeah," Barrel looked at Shock, "What now?" Shock put a hand to her chin. "Well…" she pondered. "I don't know."

The sudden presense of Oogie's voice startled us. "Well played, my children." He said with that evil chuckle we had heard so many times.  
We jumped out of surprise and looked frantically around for the 6 and ? foot burlap creature, but he was nowhere to be found.   
"Look up." Oogie said.  
We did as we were told and we were horrified at what we saw; Oogie was not inside his sack but as the black silhouette on the moon—the very same one we saw that changed our lives forever. Not that the shadow itself was horrifying, it was what it stood for; a terrible, black-hearted creature that kidnapped three orphans from their home.  
"I am impressed with your plan, Barrel;" he praised. "Booby trapping the Mayor's roof and then pretended to be defeated so you could lure Jack into your trap! Brilliant, if I do say so myself."  
Barrel blushed and grinned sheepishly. "Thank you, sir."  
He, Shock, and I all knew very well that we really WERE defeated and that there was no plan involved except singing in high-pitched annoying voices, which happened not to work at all.  
Oogie Boogie laughed again. "No, thank YOU; now I am able to destroy Jack Skellington and become the Seven Holidays King! Ahahahahahahahahahahaha!"  
"Mr. Oogie Boogie?" I asked meekly.  
"What is it, child?"  
"Where exactly did Jack fall to?"  
"My underground torture chamber." Oogie said with a triumphant grin.  
"Don't you already have one under our Treehouse?"  
"That's where it's linked to." Oogie explained. "Though I doubt Jack will ever make it that far…Ahahahahahahahahahahahaha! HE'S GOING TO BE TORN TO PIECES!!!!" With that, Oogie's shadow disappeared from the moon. 

My friends and I stared up and the now empty moon and wondered if there was one more good think we could do than just the single one we started with.


	31. Repent

Chapter XXXI  
"Repent"

"Lock," Barrel shouted at me back at the Treehouse. "What the heck are you talking about?"  
"Well, Barrel," I began, trying to explain what I felt as best I could, "Do you really think everything we've done here is good, moral, acceptable?"  
Barrel was silent.  
I took a look at Shock, who only gave me a meek smile. "Well, Barrel?" I asked.  
"I guess not." He admitted after a short while. "So what? We've earned ourselves a reputation here."  
"A good one?" I asked slyly.  
"No," Barrel muttered, "But at least we're a bit more respected here than we were at Happy Camper Orphanage, right? No one calls you short here, right, Lock?"  
This was one of those times I metioned earlier that Barrel and I ever bickered. "But it's out of FEAR," I explained. "Respect has nothing to do with it; they're AFRAID of us."  
Barrel quieted. "Really?"  
"Open your eyes, Barrel," Shock said. "We've caused so much chaos!"   
"Fun chaos." He pointed out.  
"Maybe so," I admitted. "But we have to right what we've done wrong."  
"What do you suppose we do?" Shock asked.  
My voice softened. "We take down the Oogie Boogieman."  
Shock and Barrel gasped.

"It's the only way." I said.  
"But the Book of the Wicked is gone, Lock!" Barrel said. "It discentagrated when Oogie came back to life!"  
"We've just gotta find a way." Shock said grimly.   
"Who's with me?" I asked and I put my hand out. "Say 'Aye' if you are."  
Shock put her hand ontop of mine. "Aye."   
Barrel hesitated, but then succomed to peer pressure. "Aye."   
I grinned. "Good, now we've gotta try and think of a plan."   
"We have to get back to Dr. Finky's lab," Barrel said, "He's sure to have other spell books there; you can't have just one."  
"That'll work," I said. "But we're not welcome there."  
"I have an idea…"


	32. Tactics

Chapter XXXII  
"Tactics"

Times were risky; we were hated around town and getting through to Dr. F's house was gonna be a bit troublesome. As far as we knew, at the time, Jack may have composed an angry mob to try and stop us. We tiptoed through the silent cemetery night to return back to Halloweentown. Barrel was deep in thought, probably trying to think of a "Plan B", if necessary. Once we got to the Halloweentown Gate, we peeked through to see if anyone was guarding it. There wasn't, though what we found was much worse; a lot of the Halloweentown denizens were gathered around the fountain in the center of Town Square. Worse yet, Jack began rising out of the waters and everyone cheered and hooted.  
"Damn…" Barrel whispered as we hid behind a nearby tombstone that was close enough to the gates. "We'll never get to Dr. Finklestein's lab now!"  
"What should we do?" Shock said.  
My eyes darted around the Square. "Well," I began, "If we can slip through the bars without anyone noticing, we can sneak around the back of the Town Hall and come around on the other side, and creep over to the gates to Dr. Finklestein's house and get in without anyone being the wisest."  
"It'll be hard for Barrel to be quiet for that long." Shock said ruefully.  
"Quiet, you." Barrel said quickly.  
"Guys," I said with a scowl. "You BOTH have to be quiet."  
"Well, what are we waiting for?" Barrel whispered with anxiousness. "It's now or never."  
I, myself, have never got to use the expression "it's now or never" before. If you don't know what it means, it is simply this: You have an irresistible chance to do something, but you may never get the chance to do it again for the rest of your life.  
"It's now or never." Barrel whispered.  
I sighed. "Let's go." I whispered, my heart beating wildly.

It was fairly easy to slide through the bars because we were all fairly skinny (Barrel had to use a little extra effort for he was the plumpest of us all, but he got through pretty easily). The next phase of my risky plan was to go around the back of the Town Hall. Fortunately, for us, Jack went inside. That was one less person who would be able to spot us. It was quite dark so we could stay in the shadows and all the Halloweentown creatures were in conversations; they were almost like humans. It had been so long since Barrel, Shock, and I have seen one other than ourselves. We crept through the shadows, being careful to stay out of sight.  
"I'll be the lookout." Barrel told us before we started our little trek. "If anyone starts to look this way, I'll tell you."  
We nodded.  
It didn't look like we'd need him because no one looked our way. We realized that Dr. Finklestein was out around the fountain and Sally had followed Jack inside. The lab would be empty. Abandon and creepy—but empty.  
"I can't believe those little traitors." Dr. Finklestein complained crossly to the Clown with the Tear-Away Face. "They double-crossed us to go work for Oogie."  
"What are you gonna do?" Clown asked himself nonchalantly. "Jack will take them AND their no-good boss, Oogie Boogie, down for the count.  
I was tempted to yell "we'll pay you back, I promise!" but I knew I couldn't make a peep. We made it behind Town Hall and stopped to take a breather.

Shock looked at me with sad, despairing eyes. "Did you guys want to yell, too?"  
"No question." I replied.  
"I was thinking; what is this all for? What will happen when—or if—we do defeat Oogie? Who will adopt us? Everyone hates us here!"  
"They'll probably like us again when we defeat Oogie." I assured.  
"They'd better." Barrel said with a halfhearted chuckle. "It's not like we're doing this as a hobby."  
I felt myself crying a little. Not from my eyes; but in my heart. We should have never agreed to help Oogie. I had a feeling ALL our hearts were swollen from crying too much. I couldn't blame out poor little hearts; with all the anguish we've put them through.  
Fortunately, we made it to the Doctor's lab without being noticed. The door was unlocked so we went right in and headed straight for the library.  
"What are we looking for?" Barrel asked.  
"A spell book," I replied. "Something like the Book of the Wicked."  
We were all quiet for a moment, remembering the thing that got us in all this trouble.   
"Let's start looking." Shock said finally, breaking the eerie silence.  
"We should probably start in the section where we found the Book of the Wicked in the first place." I pointed out. I could remember as clear as day where to find it.

We found many spell books including "So, you want to go to Hogwarts?", "Frog's Breath and You", "Index of Spells", "Counteracting Spells", "100 Ways to Use Worm's Wart", and an autobiography of Jambi the Genie.  
"Who the hell is Jambi the Genie?" Shock asked, with a dissatisfied tone.  
"Why?" I asked in an equally disturbed tone.  
"I just found his autobiography." She began to read a passage. "It goes 'I am Jambi the wish-granting Genie and I will write down the story of my so far, short, 6875 year life. This will be pretty hard to do without some hands My life began when my mother and father loved each other very much and—' What bologna!" she scoffed as she threw the book over her shoulder before she read any more.  
"That was disturbing…" I said.   
"Aha!" Barrel said. "I found it!"  
Shock and I scurried over.  
"'Counteracting Spells'. There HAS to be a spell in here to nullify the one we used in the Book of the Wicked to bring back Oogie.  
"Awesome!" I said with a grin. "But where is Oogie?"  
"Good question." Shock said. "If Jack survived, than he must know where Oogie is."

With that, the silence of the library was broken by the front door slamming.   
"Sally," Dr. Finklestein said to Sally, who was probably next to him. "Would you mind heating up some Sewage Soup; I'm quite hungry."  
"I am too," Sally replied. "I'll get right on it."  
Sadly, it was difficult to hear this conversation because Barrel got so spooked by the sudden voice of the doctor; he jumped and leaned against a book case, which leaned against another, which leaned against another, which leaned against another, which leaned against another, which leaned against another, and so on. It was like dominoes. All the three of us could do was stand in silent horror, mouth agape, watching the book cases that would lead to our discovery. "WHAT WAS THAT NOISE?!" the Doctor shouted from down below.


	33. To The Hinterlands

**Chapter XXXIII**

**'To The Hinterlands'**

**There was nothing we could do; if we ran, we'd be seen by either Sally or Dr. Finklestein. If we stayed, we'd obviously get caught. In a moment, Dr. Finklestein rolled his wheelchair up to the library and looked at it.**

**He gasped when he saw his books all on the floor. He gave a little yelp when he saw that his books were tossed everywhere and he gave a glare full of hatred when he saw us. **

**'YOU!' he shouted with rage. 'YOU RUINED MY LIBRARY!'**

**We were frozen.**

**'Don't you little monsters have something to say for yourselves? Anything at all?'**

**'RUN!' I shouted. **

**On command, I, along with Shock and Barrel, ran past Dr. Finklestein on both sides and we ran out the door.**

**'After them, Sally!' he called.**

**Fortunately, for us, Sally was nowhere to be found. **

**'Where do we go?' Shock panted.**

**'Our room.' I answered. "It's the only place that's safe, now!"**

**We leaped into our dark room and slammed the door behind us and locked it. The only light in the room was the light of the full moon shining through the window.**

**'That was a close one!' Barrel sighed in relief as he sank to the ground to take a rest. **

**'Well, what do we do now?' Shock asked. 'Now we're trapped in here!'**

**'Maybe not.' said a voice from the other side of the room.**

**We all jumped out of surprise and Sally emerged from the shadows. Her face was forlorn and there were tear stains dripping down her face.**

**'Sally?' we all cried.**

**'Come here.' she said shortly.**

**We did as we were told and walked over to the window where she stood. She ordered us to look down and there was a rope that reached all the way down to the ground. Right at the windowsill was a basket; big enough for three orphans to fit in. There was a hole in the middle where the rope went through. We looked at Sally in confusion.**

**'You can escpae in it.' she explained softly as she wiped her eyes. 'You can get into it and I'll let you down slowly.'**

**'Like an elevator.' Shock marveled.**

**'You're letting us go, Sally?' Barrel asked in astonishment. 'But why?'**

**Sally gave us a small smile. 'I think you're going to do the right thing with that book. Now, hop in. I'll make up something to tell Dr. Finklestein later.'**

**We thanked Sally and we rode down in the little basket, the moonlight in our faces until it softly hit the blown-over, gray grass. **

**'That was a little fishy, don't you think?' Shock asked.**

**'Who cares?' I said. 'We're outta there, right?'**

**At that second, Sally came bursting out the front door of the laboratory and ran down to Town Square which was deserted now; we could cross over to the cemetery with no problem. We were headed back to the Treehouse so we could sneak down to the casino and destroy Oogie with one of the spells in the book. To get to the Treehouse, we had to pass Spiral Hill but someone was already at Spiral Hill; TWO somebodies, actually. It was Jack and Sally.**

**'Sally!' Jack called to her as we ducked behind a tombstone. 'You shouldn't be here! It's dangerous here.'**

**'Sally's a fast runner.' Barrel commented; Shock and I elbowed him to shut up.**

**'Maybe so,' Sally replied from the crest. 'But Oogie is headed for the Hinterlands and I feel there is more danger for you down this path.'**

**Jack began to serenade his love to convince her to let him past. 'You give me strength, you show you care; I cannot fail with you so near. I KNOW I'D BE LOST WITHOUT YOU!'**

**Sally joined it. 'We'll stand together now end forever! And I'll tell you this very troubled night that 'we will set things right'!'**

**'Gag.' Shock whispered. 'Let's get out of here before they kiss.'**

**'Yuck!' I said. **

**'Good thing we were there.' Barrel said as we made our wat into the forest. 'We would've never know Oogie Boogie was headed here.'**

**The Hinterlands were different; instead of having a yellowish-brown color to it, it was as if the Hinterlands had all the life sucked out of for it was nothing but black and white. It took us about twenty minutes to find the Tree Circle again. I consider that pretty good considering we hadn't been here in a year. The Tree Circle; as expected was different, too-more different than we could've thought.**

**'THE DOORS ARE GONE?!' Barrel shouted.**

**Some ravens were startled and flew off, cawing.**

**'Big whoop.' I said. 'We just hop in. Saves us the 'energy' of opening the door, right?'**

**'No,' the boy in the skeleton costume explained, 'Not 'right'; when we opened this door, a blizzard of snow sucked us in. If I'm not corecct, snow should be EVERYWHERE right now due the the door being open so long. If we'd jumped in, we would've been falling into an endless abyss.'**

**'You're right...' Shock said. She sat down. 'We were so close.'**

**I looked into the darkness of the Christmastown door. Nothing. I looked down and I saw nothing--or did I? If looked at closely, there was a twinkling little light no tinyer than a baby's fingernail that, to me, spelled out 'hope'.**

**'Or maybe we're closer than we think!!' I said. **

**In a flash, I grabbed Shock and Barrel by the arms and I jumped into the blackness with them towards 'hope'. Hope that we would defeat Oogie. Hope that the light would get us to Christmastown. Hope that we would succeed.**


	34. Chaos in Christmastown

**Chapter XXXIV**

**'Chaos in Christmastown'**

**'ARE YOU INSANE?!' Shock screamed at me as we plummetted towards the tiny light which seemed a little bit biggger now.**

**'I DUNNO,' I shouted back. 'MAYBE!'**

**Barrel just clutched the Counteracting Spells book tight in his hands.**

**In a second, the light grew much larger than it had been and it engulfed us and we were on Yuletide Hill in the cold, cold snow. I stood myself up and Shock smacked me across the face saying that we could've all been killed; the smack stung in the frosty air. Down below was the peaceful Christmastown--or FORMALLY peaceful. It looked like Oogie's casino had exploded and everything had landed in Christmastown and took over. Everything had changed; the merry go round was now a weapon. All the little creatures that someone used to be able to ride on had been turned into Oogie's monsters and they shot small, spherical bullets at anyone who came close The streets were desterted and there were miniscule, scattered fires around town. Worse yet, the Christmas Tree in the town square had been turned into an Oogie Tree--a giant, leafy replica of the Boogieman's head staring back at the little, horrified children on the snowcapped hill.**

**'This is terrible!' I shouted. 'What are we going to do?'**

**'Find Oogie.' replied Barrel. **

**The tree of us decended Yuletide Hill into the streets of the once joyous Christmastown. No one was there and the Oogie Tree was even more terrifying up close.**

**'What do we do now?' Shock asked.**

**I pondered. 'What if we--OOF!' Something cold and icy hit me. We looked down. It was a snowball.**

**As I brushed the snow out of my red hair, we turned to where the snowball had come from. There, about 10 feet away from us, shivering in the cold with a mean glare was a familiar-looking elf. He was no taller than Shock and couldn't have been much older but his clothes had tears in them and there were scrapes and bruises all over him--nothing serious--and in his hand and held another snowball. Then I remembered where I saw him. He was the elf that gave us directions to Sandy Claws' house last time we were at Christmastown.**

**'LEAVE CHRISTMASTOWN, NOW!' the elf shouted at us. Tears were dripping down his face. 'I know why YOU'RE here! You're here because your gonna help that big sack of bugs and stuff kill Santa and ruin Christmas!'**

**He obviously remebered that we left with Sandy Claws last year.**

**'Throw another snowball at us and I'll pund ya!' Shock threatened. **

**The elf threw another snowball and it smacked Shock right it the face; Barrel and I laughed quietly.**

**Shock brushed the snow and slush off her face and a frightening glower was there. 'THAT TEARS IT!' Shock bawled. She started to charge at the elf, who still had no fear, but Barrel and I held her back.**

**'Let me try, Sis.' Barrel said as he handed me Counteracting Spells. He walked over to the elf. 'Mr.--'Elf', is it?--we ask for your humblest purgation regarding our waylay of Sandy C--I mean, 'Santa Claus'--and to scrutinize the locale of the singleton called the Oogie Boogieman.'**

**'He lost me at 'humblest'.' I whispered to Shock.**

**'What the hell are you saying?!' Shock screamed at her half-brother.**

**He turned to us. 'I thought if I talked politely with big words,' Barrel explained, 'he'd let us through.'**

**'What were you saying?' the elf asked Barrel.**

**'What I meant was 'we're sorry we kidnaped your Santa Claus and we hope you forgive us and we want you to tell us where the big, brown Boogieman went'. You got all that?'**

**'But why should I tell you where he went?' the elf asked.**

**'Because,' I began. 'We want Oogie gone, too. We snuck into our old guardian's library and got a book out that will help us defeat him but eveyone back in Halloweentown hates us so we had to do it in secret and a gril named Sally helped us and we came through the Hinterlands and now we're here looking for Oogie Boogie and there's no time to waste! We have to stop him before he ruins Christmas and all the other holidays so he can make everyone celebrate Oogie Boogie Day SEVEN DAYS A YEAR and I hope you, as well as me don't want that to happen. Capisce?'**

**The elf, seemingly believing our story, nodded. He directed us to the Northeastern tunnel of Christmastown and let us go through. What we saw there was too horiifying to imagine! The Christmastown train was turned into a weapon as well; it also looked like something out of Oogie's casino. It had an ugly face and a knife aticking out of his mouth. The train was headed right towards a rope. Our eyes followed the trail of the rope and it was connected to a lampost and at the top, Sandy Claws hung in midair! Luckily, Jack was whipping the train and some of Oogie's monsters that had joined the party with his Soul Robber.**

**'How'd Jack get here before us?' Barrel asked.**

**'We can't worry about that now!' Shock said. 'Look!'**

**At the other side of the square was Oogie Boogie in Sandy Claw's sleigh screaming 'DIE, SANDY CLAWS, DIE!' in delight. Oogie then saw us and our hearts lept; he motioned to us to go over there and we did as we were told.**

**'Well, well, well.' Oogie said. 'What have we here? Why are you children here?'**

**'Uh, we wanted to help you kill Jack and Sandy.' I lied.**

**Oogie grinned. 'Good. Now go light some fires over there; I want this place burned down by the time I take off.'**

**'Take off?' Barrel asked in confusion.**

**'Yes, I'm going to deliver bugs and snakes to the good little children as Oogie Claws! Won't that be something?'**

**Instead of lighting fires, we hid behind the sleigh. **

**'It's now or never.' Shock whispered.**

**'You're right.' I said. 'I say we hide among the presents and take him down from the sky!'**

**'That sounds a little dangerous, don't you think?' Barrel quivered.**

**'So is giving a two-year-old a snake for Christmas.' Shock argued.**

**We finally settled on my plan. We hid amongst the presents in Oogie's sleigh and we could hear all the slithering of the fickle creatures inside the boxes. In a moment, an explosion was heard and Oogie growled.**

**'CAN'T ANYONE JUST PERISH AROUND HERE!' shouted the Boogieman.**

**'It's over, Oogie.' Jack said.**

**'For you, maybe!' cackled Oogie. 'Giddyup!' The sleigh began to shake and then it completely lifted off the ground! 'HO, HO, HO! Merry Oogiemas to all, and to all a grood FRIGHT!' **

**'He has my sleigh!' said Sandy as his voice got fainter and fainter.**

**'No shit, Sherlock.' I commented.**

**As the sleigh drifted farther into the sky, we heard Oogie talk to himself. 'All I need to do is get through the dimension of Holiday Trash Hill, and I'll be on Earth!'**

**'What now?' I asked.**

**'We should jump out and take him by surprise and I'll read the spell from the book.' Barrel said.**

**'Then WE have to drive the sleigh!' Shock cried.**

**'It's the only way.' I said. 'On three?'**

**They nodded. **

**'One.'**

**'Two.'**

**'THREE!' **


	35. A Filthy Finale

**Chapter XXXV**

**'A Filthy Finale'**

**Almost as if on cue, there was loud booming above us and the whole sleigh shook violently. This caused a chain of events that all happened with in seven seconds. The reindeer were spooked by the sudden noice and they began to thrash around. Oogie couldn't keep his balance and toppled off the sleigh with a loud 'BWUH!' The massive loss of weight from the sleigh caused it to become unbalanced and the whole bundle of horrible gifts (if you could even call them that) capsized off the sleigh--and, as fate would have it, us with them!! As we fell, we heard Oogie scream about 50 feet below us.**

**'JAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK!!! YOU WON'T GET AWAY WITH THIS!!!!!!! I'M THE SEVEN HOLIDAYS KING!!!!!!!'**

**'I've had enough of terrifying falls for one lifetime!!' I called to the others but the massive rush of air conquered all sound. **

**I closed my eyes tightly, knowing I and my friends were to die. Someone up there must've loved me because, on the contrary, we landed on something soft. I opened my eyes and saw that we landed on something pink made out of cotton. On closer inspection, it was a gigantic rabbit doll. It look much like the rabbit we thought was Sandy Claws last year.**

**'We're alive?' I asked in disbelief. 'WE'RE ALIVE!' **

**'Where are we?' Barrel asked. **

**The place was even drearyer than Halloweentown. There was garbage everywhere circled around an empty crater (the one Oogie landed in). The sky was a blackish purple color with white and gray whisps of smoke being blown around by the wind.**

**'This must be the Holiday Trash Hill Oogie was talking about.' guessed Shock.**

**'It sure looks like it.' I marveled. 'This must be where all the trash goes when a town is done with its holiday.'**

**And it was true. The Halloween and Christmas piles were easy to spot. There was also Independence Day, and Thanksgiving. There were also other holidays that we had never seen before. Oogie began to moan and groan and there are not enough adjectives for me to use to descirbe the sound that the Boogieman made. Then, bugs and snakes began crawling out from every place imaginable, each one of them carrying a pice of garbage at least twice their size and they all engulfed themselves around Oogie.**

**'Whoever wants to get THAT close to Oogie,' Shock commented, 'is probably drunk.'**

**In only minutes, Oogie was a ten story tall Goliath made of garbage. He laughed distortedly. I thank God everyday of my life that he didn't lay eyes on us.**

**'B-Barrel?' Shock stuttered. 'This would be a good time to use the Counteracting Spells book.'**

**'Oops.' Barrel said quickly.**

**Shock and I glared at him. 'What 'oops', Barrel?' I said.**

**'I-i think I dropped it while we were falling from the sky.'**

**'YOU IDIOT!!!!' Shock roared at him. 'WE WERE SO CLOSE AND YOU MADE US FAIL YOU ARE SO OUT OF MY WILL!!'**

**We noticed that Jack was in the crater with the now giant Oogie.**

**'Hello, Oogie.' Jack said with no fear.**

**'That's MEGA Oogie to you, Pumpkin Wuss!' Mega Oogie retored. 'It's payback time, Jack.'**

**'Is that all you've got to say?' Jack said with a smirk.**

**Ooge began shooting garbage out of his arms at Jack, who dodged them gracefully. 'Well, well, well!' Oogie sang. 'What a pest you are! Still around? Ooooooooh! Can't say I like that! Why don't you just give up, y'know, SURRENDER?!'**

**'We're not out yet!' I said. **

**'We look out to me.' Barrel mumbled.**

**'Who's fault is that?' Shock growled.**

**'GUYS!' I shouted. 'We can still do something!'**

**'Like what?' Shock ask.**

**'We can light Oogie on fire.'**

**Barrel's face lit up. 'Yeah! Garbage burns really easily! You could probably find something to light with all the junk around here.'**

**'Good! Let's go!' **

**'It's over!' Jack sang along. 'It's over! This time you've gone too far! It's over I'M SERIOUS! Just who do you think you are?'**

**'He mocks me; he fights me! I don't know which is worse!' I mouthed the words to the next part because they were the same as the old song. 'I might just split a seam now if I don't die laughin' first!'**

**'What's this, a trick?' Jack sang as he looked up at Oogie. 'I'm not impressed; you're bad and now you're tall! It makes it all the more worthwhile to see a giant fall!'**

**'Talk, talk, talk!' Oogie mocked giddily, 'but I'll tell you, this giant's going nowhere! If I were you, I'd take a hike! There's danger in the air! Whoh-oh!'**

**'Whoa-oh!'**

**'Whoa-oh!'**

**'Whoa-oh!' **

**'Whoa-oh!'**

**'Whoa-oh! I'm the only Pumpkin King!'**

**'Did you guys find anything?' I asked hopefully. 'I got nothing.'**

**'Well,' Shock replied, 'Barrel and I found some matches and some left over fireworks that were never detonated from the Independence Day pile.'**

**'This gives me an idea.' Barrel interjected. 'If we can attatch the fireworks to Oogie and light them, at least one of them will probably catch and start burning Oogie. But how are we going to get them to stay on?'**

**'I think I found saw some duct tape for wrapping presents with in the Christmastown pile over there.'**

**'Halloweentown is mine!' Jack shouted.**

**'Well, aren't we confident?' Oogie snapped back.**

**'Well,' Jack sang as he dodged some more garbage, 'I'm feeling angry and there's pleanty left to do! I've fought your most unwelcome help and now, I'm after YOU!'**

**'Even if you catch me,' Oogie explained, 'you can never do me in; I'm ten stories tall and just as strong which means I'm gonna win! Whoa-oh!'**

**'Whoa-oh!'**

**'Whoa-oh!'**

**'Whoa-oh!'**

**'Whoa-oh!'**

**'OOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH I'M THE ONLY PUMPKIN KING!!!!'**

**'I got it!' I said, hopping over over piles of garbage to get back to my friends.**

**'Good,' Barrel said with a smile. 'Now, Lock and I will climb up Oogie and attatch these to him usong the duct tape. Then, using these matches, we light the firecrackers and that should give us just enough time to get back down before Oogie goes ablaze!'**

**'Then what do I do?' Shock asked angrilly. **

**'You're a girl;' Barrel explained, 'You can't do the cool stuff like me and Lock. You can put some firecrackers on the bottem because destroying the foundation is very importa--'**

**Barrel was interrupted by a powerful slap across the face by his half-sister. **

**'We're all gonna go, you sexist moron, if anything.' she retorted.**

**'It's over,' Jack sang, 'it's over! Your scheme was bound to fail! It's over YOU'RE FINISHED HERE! Your next stop will be jail!'**

**'How feeble,' Oogie screamed, 'how childish! Is that the best you've got? You think that you're a hero, Jack. But I think you are NOT!'**

**We had already taped some firecrackers onto Mega Oogie's lower back and we were headed for his shoulders. Luckily, there was a lot of garbage jutting out of him that we could use as foot holds to make the climb easier. It was still pretty tough, though; Oogie was moving around alot and it was hard to stay balanced. I almost fell off a few times. Finally, we were up to Oogie's shoulders and all the firecrackers had been taped on. The view was quite breathtaking; Jack looked like an ant. Barrel explained that we should light them on the way down. **

**'Get the matches ready, Lock!' Barrel called.**

**'Gotcha!' I said.**

**'I'M THE SEVEN HOLIDAYS KING!!!!' Oogie yelled at his nemises.**

**'YOU'RE KING OF NOTHING!' Jack spat.**

**I got the matches out and Oogie shook violently with rage and caused me to drop them.**

**'GODDAMNIT!!!!' I shouted.**

**'WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!' Oogie screamed as trash fell from him, trying to crush the Pumpkin King. 'Now it's time for you to see what it really means to scare cuz I'm a Gamblin' Boogieman although I don't play fair! It's much more fun I must confess with liiiiiiiiiives on the line! Not mine, of course, but yours, old friend, now that'd be just fine!'**

**'You dropped the matches!!!' Barrel and Shock wailed.**

**'I know!' I cried back. 'What do we do now?!' **

**Jack turned into a flaming scarecrow and shot a massive fireball at the Oogie Boogieman. The flames were so hot, that I could feel its tremendous heat 50 feet away from us. Oogie turned to the left to let the fireball pass him on the right. But the burning sphere was close enough that it could light the wicks to all the fireworks and Oogie was none the wisest. **

**'We did it!' I shouted.**

**We all began to climb down as Oogie fell apart. But, as fate would have it, the section of him we were decending from was blown off! Again, my pals and I fell through the crisp Christmas Eve night. I hit the ground with a THUD and my world went black.**

**'Whoa-oh!'**

**'Whoa-oh!'**

**'Whoa-oh!'**

**'Whoa-oh!'**

**'Whoa-oh!'**

**'Whoa-oh! I'M THE ONLY PUMPKIN KING!!!!'**


	36. A New Beginning

**Chapter XXXVI**

**'A New Beginning'**

**I woke up to silence; creepy, awkward silence that deeply frightened me. There was also blackness; I could see nothing at all and something was jabbing me in the back. Was I dead? No, I was in a humongous pile of trash and I dug my way out wearily. I felt like I just got hit by a truck. When I reached the surface, Mega Oogie (thank goodness) and Jack were gone.**

**'We won.' I whispered, bone-tired. When I got no response, I realized that Shock and Barrel had disappeared. 'SHOCK?! BARREL?!' I got up to look for them and a humongous pain shot up from my leg. It was probably broken from when all that trash fell on me. I was lucky that was all that happened. I dug for them slowly for what seemed like hours but there was no sign of either of them. When I was just about to give up, Shock burst out of one of the holes I had made.**

**'Lock, are you okay?' she asked me.**

**'I think my leg's broken, but I'm fine. You don't look so good.' **

**All over Shock's body were scrapes and bruises that would take quite awhile to heal. She was still luckier than me. 'I think I'm alright. Oh, your forehead's bleeding.'**

**It was true, the left side of my forehead was covered with the sticky, warm, red stuff. I hated the sight of blood ever since I saw my dad's when he died, let alone my own. To think that I was the one thinking up those dastardly plans when we were planning to kidnap Sandy Claws. **

**After a little while, we found Barrel under another pile. He was unconcious, but okay. Someone up there liked us After he awakened, we walked around (me, being supported by a stick we found) for a way out. **

**'Look!' Barrel finally called. He was pointing to a stone pumpkin with a white light emitting from it. **

**'Should we go in?' I asked.**

**'It's the only way that looks like it leads to somewhere else.' Shock answered.**

**We stepped into the pumpkin and we were on the stage in the Town Hall.**

**'What the heck just happened?' Barrel asked, confused.**

**'It was probably some kind of portal.' I explained.**

**The three of us walked outside to Town Square and, of course, Jack was surrounded by adoring townsfolk near the fountain.**

**'Citizens of Halloweentown,' Jack Skellington announced, 'I, as the Pumpkin King, am pleased to anounced that Oogie Boogie has been successfully destroyed!' **

**The townsfolk cheered wildly.**

**'It was tough,' Jack continued, 'but I finally managed to pull it off!'**

**'HE managed to pull it off?' Shock whispered to us angrilly. 'What are we? Chopped liver?'**

**'Well, well, well!' said the Harlequin Demon mockingly. 'If it isn't the little Oogie bringer-backers!'**

**We bowed our heads down in shame.**

**'What do you suppose we do with them?' the Devil asked the others.**

**'Let's lock them up!' the Clown shouted.**

**'Let's bury them!' said the Corpse Kid.**

**'No matter what we do,' Dr. Finklestein called out, 'they need to be punished; they ruined my library!'**

**'Who cares about your stupid library?!' snapped the Hanging Tree, 'They almost destroyed Halloweentown!'**

**The Hanged Men nodded in agreement.**

**Jack walked over to us and faced the citizens. 'Why punish them?' Jack asked.**

**The townsfolk, including us stared, puzzled, at him.**

**'They were obviously FORCED to work for Oogie!' Jack explained to them.**

**The three of us smiled sheepishly; we all knew very well that we were never forced. For the first time, I realized that this was of our own free will.**

**'Don't get me wrong,' Jack continued, 'Oogie may not be as intimidating to us as he may be to three little children like Lock, Shock, and Barrel, here.'**

**'Then what DO we do with them?' asked the Wolfman.**

**We were wondering the same thing ourselves.**

**Jack thought for a moment. 'Why, I'll take them in!' the skeleton exclaimed.**

**Everyone gasped. **

**The Pumpkin King turned to the Mayor. 'As long as it's okay with you, Mayor.'**

**The Mayor's anxious face was on and we whispered to himself nervously. 'Will you keep them out of trouble?' **

**'Most definately!' Jack said. 'I'll come over to the Town Hall tomorrow to sign adoption papers!'**

**I looked at my friends and they looked back at me. **

**With all the awkwardness, we completely forgot to inform the townspeople that we defeated Oogie and not Jack. The Pumpkin King took us back to his home and he let us stay up to about eleven but then put us to bed on his living room couches. Before he turned the lights off, he crouched down, looked at us and said with a smile.**

**'Thanks.' he said softly.**

**'For what?' I asked.**

**'For helping defeat Oogie Boogie.' he clarified. 'Don't think I didn't see you way up there!'**

**'Why didn't you tell everyone that we helped out?' inquired Barrel.**

**Jack sighed. 'I knew this was coming.' he muttered to himself. 'It's a little complicated; you see, the Citizens of Halloweentown need someone to look up to; a hero! As fate would have it, being the Pumpkin King, that 'someone' would be myself. They need a leader to guide them and tell them what to do. That's why they helped me take over Christmas last year; if I wanted it so, it must be the right thing to do. The town really just isn't ready for you accused-villains to be the ones that saved the day.'**

**'We understand.' sighed Shock, disappointedly after a long pause.**

**Jack saw our faces of failure and felt guilty. 'I'll tell you what,' he whispered as if someone was eavesdropping, 'I WILL tell them some day. I promise.'**

**We grinned slightly and so did Jack. **

**'Now,' he grunted as he stood up. 'Off to bed! We have a big day tomorrow with all of the adoption papers and whatnot. Oh, and we've got to dip you all in the fountain to heal those injuries of yours.' He tucked us in and went up the stairs and turned off the lights so theat the only illumination in the room was the moonlight shining brightly on my face. 'Goodnight. If you need me I'm going up to my study to try anf find out the true meaning of Christmas.' He closed the door to his study and all was silent.**

**'So this is how it ends?' I asked the darkness.**

**'Uh-huh.' Shock replied.**

**'Yup.' Barrel pipped.**

**'The three of us and a happy ending and a friendly new guardian?'**

**'Uh-huh.'**

**'Yup.'**

**'And through all our peril and hard work, we sill managed to fail because Jack got all the credit.'**

**'Uh-huh.'**

**'Yup.'**

**I was quiet for a second. 'I love you guys. You're my best friends.'**

**'I love you, too, Lock.' Shock said quietly. 'Friends 'till the end.'**

**'I love you both.' whispered Barrel. 'Friends forever.'**

**I smiled quietly to myself in the darkness. 'We won.' I whispered almost inaudiably and I drifted off to sleep.**


	37. Epilogue

**Epilogue**

**Just as Jack promised, he filled out our adoption papers and brought us in. He dipped us in the fountain in the middle of Town Square and our injuries were healed; my leg was as good as new! Sally began coming over more and more often and she would spend time with us and Jack. Jack treated us like his own children; we would for picnics in the cemetery and we would do all sorts of things together. Sometimes I wish I could go back to Happy Camper Orhanage and tell everyone there what happened to Shock, Barrel and I. It's been two years since we were transported to Halloweentown and I think they may have foregot about us. Out of all my time here, I most regret that I was unconsious when Oogie Boogie met his demise. After Oogie's revenge, Halloweentown slowly returned to normalcy. Under the care of Jack, the three orphans had become 'liked' citizens once again. Sure, we played a few little pranks but there was nothing dangerous. Now, as I type this story that I have decided to call _Three Orphans; the Story of Lock, Shock, and Barrel, _I realize how lucky I am to have good friends like Eimily 'Shock' Sorciere and Peter 'Barrel' Squelette and how fortunate I am to have seen and experienced all the things I've been through. I mean, how many nine year olds could say that they helped save seven holidays in one night!**

**The End**

**(Note: There is one more chapter after this)**


	38. Author's Recap

**Author's Recap**

**By Tom Bone**

**Well, we all knew this was coming; the end to my fanfic. I know a lot of people that will be disappointed to see it go and this brings me to my first point: I DO NOT WANT ANY COMMENTS/PMS/EMAILS ASKING ME TO WRITE MORE. This fanfic is done and I am not writing any more. I just hope that you had as much fun reading this as I did writing it. I started this fanfic back in May and I didn't think it would be as sucsessful as it has become! ;) I just wanted to point out that I had to do a lot of research for this fanfic and I hope that everyone appreciates it. I had to scan each LS&B scene to make every detail noticable (This should be noticed in Kidnap the Sandy Claws chapter). The reason I did this was because of 2 reasons; 1. To increase my knowledge of TNBC ans 2. To make the settings as clear as possible. Before I go, I REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEALLY appreciate everyone reading this and I, being the author, am also sad to see it go. Thanks for reading! **


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